


Life in the Avengers Tower (formerly, Head Canon Shorts)

by Notoyax17



Series: Head Canons, not so AU [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Avengers, Fluff, Gen, Headcanon, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-05 03:06:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 27,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1803076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notoyax17/pseuds/Notoyax17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of ficlets for the more domestic life of the Avengers and those connected to them. Rather than OTPs, these are the BroTPs.<br/>Initial chapters are shorter, others are one shot length (they keep getting longer and crazier against my wishes).<br/><br/>Notable Chapters:<br/>9: Wherein Bucky is (not quite literally) Sam's cat<br/>11: Game Nights - The Avengers<br/>15: Cooking - The Avengers<br/>19: All that is yours is also mine - Natasha and the Avengers<br/>20: Clint sleeps <i>everywhere</i> - Clint and the Avengers<br/>22: So it turns out Phil's back (sort of?) - Coulson, Fury and the Avengers<br/>25: Never too old for kids games - The Avengers</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tony and Natasha

**Author's Note:**

> It's just a couple of my personal head canons in the form of short stories. If any of these give you inspiration, by all means, go for it and let me know!
> 
> Some are short, some are one shot length.
> 
> The works in this series aren't related in any chronological order, so they can be read in any order.

Tony would be the first, second and last person in line to admit that Natasha was sexy as all get out. Though he thinks that he (and most of the Avengers, Steve especially) sees Natasha as not so much potential girlfriend/fuck-buddy but as a protective big brother.

The type of big brother that casually sharpens her knife collection while she inquires about your intentions towards her little sisters. The type that is very clear that she have dibs on her siblings’ suffering and anyone else that tries can either do it her way or gtfo.

It’s comforting in a frightening sort of way.


	2. Tony and Clint

Despite all of the ‘bird brain’ jokes being tossed around, Clint is a genius. Although he seems to have no interest in the practical engineering aspects of physics (and keeps refusing any offers of a personal lab), Clint is who Tony goes to when he needs someone to bounce ideas off of or work ideas through with and Bruce isn’t available. The things the guy comes up with, the concepts…Tony’s always left feeling a bit impressed.

The first time Natasha sees them talking, a small crinkle forms in her brow. Once Tony leaves, she turns to Clint in confusion. “You understood that?”

Clint…has no idea what Tony is talking about half the time. While he does have a background in physics, it’s practical (see archery) and not at all school taught. But Clint is nothing if not resourceful.

For all that Tony thinks of Clint as a great conversationalist, Clint never once actually talks. Through a series of eyebrow raises, eye narrowing, head tilts, etc., Clint simply conveys the exact shade of “You’re kidding, right?” “Do you really need **me** to tell you this?” “Come on, you know this,” and “Does that actually make sense to you?” that Tony needs to figure things out on his own.

Watching Coulson ramble (he never rambles!) at Melinda May left a bit of an impression on him.


	3. Phil and Clint and Natasha

Phil Coulson is apparently comfortable as fuck (curse word required) to sleep with. Clint and Natasha swear by this.

(When you’re all but stumbling into a safe house tired out of your mind and trying not to show it, deciding who, if anyone, should sleep on the floor of what can barely be classified as a shed seems pointless.)

Rumor has it that he is product of using magic to combine valium with teddy bear DNA. It allows for no less than 4 hours of not just continuous restful sleep, but pleasant dreams as well.

The fact that the man is the most reassuring/calming person they’ve ever met both on and off the field has nothing to do with it.

Really.


	4. Clint and Thor

Clint once caught Thor in the living room trying to comb half ruined braids out of his hair. Each painfully. sharp. tug. jerked twitches of sympathy from Clint. After a minute of watching the god from behind, he threw up his hands and stalked on over, grabbing the comb and taking over.

There were lots of girls in the circus. Braiding hair was just a thing you learned to do if you were any decent with your hands (as was applying make-up, but that was a story for another time).

It wasn’t long before Clint became Thor’s go to person for hair styling, the two often sitting together, Thor on the couch and Clint perched along the back of it, commiserating about a certain dark haired god of mischief.


	5. Tony and The Avengers (+ Rhodey)

Natasha is only vaguely alarmed to wake up the day after a particularly bad mission to find Tony kneeling at her side and watching her. She had fallen asleep on the couch (rare when the entire team isn’t on the couch with her) and had actually been woken up by his staring, similar to that of a cat’s.

She was a touch more alarmed to notice that he was staring at her chest. She glared at him but didn’t otherwise move, Tony somehow remaining unaffected by the weight of her glare. She was about to tell him off when he reached up and placed two fingers against her neck. It took her a moment to realize that he was checking her pulse. After half a minute, his eyes trailed up to her face. He eyes were open but sort of glazed, like he was tired out of his mind. It was a full minute of maintained eye contact before there was a flash of recognition there, as if he were just now noticing the fact that she was awake. He smiled at her, a sleepy thing, and stared at her for a full two minutes longer. She waited, watching him, anticipating something, anything. Every now and again, he tilt his head or lean in closer, his smile twitching a little at the corners. After a bit, he adjusted the blanket around her, leaning down and kissing her on the forehead and leaving the room. Leaving her with a sense of _what the actual fuck just happened?_

Tony was perfectly normal the next morning. Not even the ‘perfectly normal’ of someone trying to hide/avoid something. Just normal.

So she mentioned it to Clint. Tony’d done that to him too, several times. And Bruce. And Steve. And Thor. The only common denominator being that they’d been asleep in a common area or left access to their floor/room open.

It wasn’t even that often. Just every couple of weeks. It took them two months to think of asking Pepper, who recommended that they ask Rhodey because she had just chalked it off to a Tony-being-her-boyfriend thing.

So they called him.

"Oh, that? Yeah…he’s not actually awake. Fully anyway."

Clint raised an eyebrow at the video monitor. “You’re kidding. He’s checking up on us in his sleep? Why?”

"To make sure you’re not dead, basically. He checks your breathing then your pulse. Then he just hangs out to make sure you’re not having a nightmare or anything. Then he starts rambling at you in his head: Oh hey, Rhodey’s awake! Hi, Rhodey! You okay, you look sleepy, buddy. I wonder if he had a nightmare…he seems fine now. He’s not sleeping in his bed though. Maybe I should buy him a new one. He’d probably make me take it back, I should ask Pepper to buy him a bed. Or I could just make him a bed…None of those stupid springs. Wow, it’s probably late. He must be pretty tired. Why is even he awake at this time? Come on, Rhodey, it’s sleepy time. Back to dream land with you!" He rattled off, completely deadpan.

They didn’t know which was weirder: The fact that they could actually hear those words match up with Tony’s sleep expressions in their heads, or the fact that James Rhodes could figure all of that out without Tony ever actually speaking.

"Just make him lay down when he does that. He’ll shut right down."


	6. Jarvis and Peter

From the very first time Spider-Man spent time at the tower (working with Tony as they tried to stop Doctor Octopus in his efforts to turn the city's squirrels into people-maiming robots - and seriously what the _hell is with this guy's rogues?_ ) he and Jarvis kind of hit it off. Which is nice. Few people actually actively chat with Jarvis the way Tony does.

So it's nice. At first.

Two years and an alarming confession ( _holy shit, he's like FIVE_ ) later, the two of them have become even more friendly. Which, once again, is fine. Jarvis loves snark. It keeps him on his metaphorical toes.

Walking in on a conversation that ends with "...oh that's brilliant! Jarvis, seriously, if Mr. Stark ever makes you a body, I'm yours just for that," is slightly less fine.

"Would you prefer that I take you out for dinner first, Peter?" Oh god, since when were they on a first name basis? Jarvis doesn't even call Pepper by her first name!

"That'd be nice. I'm not that easy. Although, one more prototype like that and I might just waive that rule."

Tony's eye twitched and he stormed into the lab. He pointed sharply at Peter who was bent over a counter, playing with one of the monitor's interface. _**"You,"**_ he growled out. _**"No.**_ No. Jarvis, this is not going to be a thing. He's too old for you!"

"While Peter has technically existed for several years longer than I have Sir, technically, based on the programming made by you, my vocalization and my "cognitive abilities," I would place myself somewhere in the early thirties in age. Thus making Peter the younger party," the AI intoned.

"Either way!"

"Is that fair? I mean you've dated girls with a larger age gap than that," Peter said. "Kinda hypocritical, no?"

Tony's eyes narrowed to slits. "Jarvis, you're grounded. Forever. Parker, out of my house."

" _Father_ , you realize that attempting to smother the flames of our passions will only cause them to burn brighter?"

Tony stared up at the ceiling in complete and unadulterated horror. After a moment he simply spun on his heels and stalked out of the room, Peter's laughter not doubt going to haunt his dreams that night.

"Oh my god...I just, can I marry you, man?"

Clearly, Tony was just going to have to murder the kid.

It was the only reasonable option.


	7. Of kidnapping and poor laid plans

In all honestly, while the team was certainly surprised, alarmed, _worried_  by Tony’s very public kidnapping, they were not at all surprised when he turned up several days later little worse for wear.

Thankfully, it hadn’t been that bad. Tony’s been kidnapped more than a handful of times in his life (some times…much more painful than others), but these guys…had been kind of bad at it. While they were smart enough to ditch his cell phone and search him for tracking devices, they’d handcuffed him and left him with his keys in his pocket. It took all of ten minutes to turn the key ring into a lock pick. He’d spent more time trying to find a working way of communicating after leaving that little hole in the wall then he’d spent in captivity. He’d spent more time unconscious than he had awake during that time.

He almost felt bad about destroying their base. He almost felt bad about just how _long_ he and the team had joked about the group’s worthlessness as kidnappers. Because that was mean and they _had_ managed to move him from one place to another and that deserved some points.

That said, they shouldn’t have been surprised when, two days later, during a press conference welcoming Tony back and assuring the world that the Iron Avenger was indeed A-Okay, Clint decided to make an announcement.

"This is…this is more of a PSA than anything else, okay. But…you guys, all of you random bad guys out there, seriously, stop it. If you feel the need to kidnap someone, you’re much better off going after Steve or Thor, okay?"

That earns him some hearty laughter from their audience. But Clint just blinked hard and shook his head.

"That’s not a joke. Tony and Natasha and I are…a bit more vulnerable. Easier to kidnap. Easier to kill. Easier marks. I get it. But… just take a moment and think about that, okay? We’re going to get free. We will. Period. It’s just harder. So we’re less careful. Less kind about it. Everyone…every single person that has ever taken us hostage is dead. All of them. We will blow up your buildings, just torch all of that shit to the ground to get out and get rid of anyone that gets in the way. Steve and Thor together don’t cause even half of the amount of damage that we do individually. They are nicer than we are. They don’t _need_ to. Remember that.”

It’s a challenging statement. But it works much better than Tony’s last “Mess with me and my shit and I will end you!” ever did. The next couple of bad guys do indeed go after Steve or Thor. Which seems to have actually gone worse for their organizations.

Steve is still getting gift baskets from the Organization for the Supremacy of the Righteous Overlords.


	8. Tony and Rhodey and helping hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this one has a TRIGGER WARNING. For SUICIDE contemplation and alcoholism. I'm not adding that tag to the fic as a whole because it's one chapter, not explicit and easily skipped.   
> It ends on a happy note too, so there's that.
> 
> Also, I in no way endorse Tony's coping mechanisms.

Pepper loves Rhodey, she really does. She respects his intelligence (he’s the R&D liaison for a reason that’s not just because of his friendship with Tony after all), his determination and his wit. She’s generally fond of his friendship with Tony, how Tony and his crazy are a touch more manageable when all three of them are together (unless he’s dying, apparently).

But, despite all of that, she can’t help but dislike the way that he seems to _indulge_ Tony in some of his vices, even if he bitches about them. How every time Tony falls of the wagon (falls of the wagon, rolls into a ditch and goes out of his way to blow the ditch up so that he can bury himself deeper), Rhodey seems to be right at his side, holding his hand but never really pulling him up or out.

She doesn’t need to have been in Tony’s life to have heard about the clusterfuck that was the three weeks after his parent’s death.

As well as Virginia Potts knows Tony, James Rhodes _understands_ Tony so much more.

So when he finds Tony that December, drunk out of his mind, Rhodey stays by his side. He stays by Tony’s side for every day of those three weeks and watches his best friend get almost (always almost, he makes sure to start dimming lights and playing stupid lullabies while swaying Tony’s shoulders side to side as he wanders around until the kid “decides” that he’s totally sleepy of his own free will before he gets anywhere near alcohol poisoning levels) alarmingly drunk.

He stays by his side at night, keeps Tony’s hands against his chest as he holds him while they sleep. Before doing it all again the next day.

Because Rhodey understands Tony. He understands just how smart he is and how _good_ he is at being smart. He understands just how quick and clever and tactical he is. He understands just how dangerous Tony can be even in an empty room.

So he stays by Tony’s side and lets him get too drunk to think and too drunk to feel until he can manage to do both again.

Because until the Avengers, until (surprisingly enough) Nick Fury, there was no one in the world with the strength to lift Tony up. Because when Tony fell, he fell too hard, too far and too fast for anyone to stop without dying.

So Rhodey simply fell with him, slowed that descent just a little. Just enough so that when they reached the bottom, he could offer up a smile and say, “Cool. Are you done? Can we go now?” and make climbing his way back up a little easier. Maybe convince him to build an escalator to make the trip faster.

Though he’ll never be about to say he thought of flying to the top instead of climbing there.


	9. Strays - Bucky and Sam (and also Steve)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Because I feel like getting all of my cat thoughts out of the way. This is not connected to the previous cat story (cat's eye view))

 

Steve is vaguely alarmed to realize one day, about three months into Bucky’s on and off stay with them, that Bucky is Sam’s cat. Not even his cat.  _Sam’s_.

Unintentionally, Sam is the one that starts it. Bucky is trying to get used to them, though is still very obviously uncomfortable with being around people. While Steve does his best to make Bucky feel included in everything he does, Sam…sort of ignores him. 

Sam doesn’t  _actively_ ignore Bucky. He simply moves around him casually, the same way he would ignore Steve while he’s focused on his artwork or mission papers: simply not acknowledging him unless he’s acknowledged first. Not even to make eye contact. 

Sam moves around his home as if there _isn’t_ a potentially homicidal assassin (that has tried to kill them more than once) hanging out in the living room of their apartment. 

He doesn’t act wary around Bucky the way Natasha does or treat him with kid gloves the way Steve does when he does something wrong. 

"Hey!" Bucky looked up slowly from where he was at the fridge, carton of milk halfway to his lips. Sam, sitting on the couch and half turned to face him, pointed at him. " _No.”_ he said pointedly. He pointed at the carton and then at the cupboard that held the mugs before turning back to face the TV. Steve was about to move, to say something, when Bucky closed the fridge, set the carton down on the counter, an went to grab a black mug from the cupboard.

Bucky seemed to actively seek Sam out when he was home. Not to say or do anything to him, but simply to sit and watch him with that intense stare of his. Which Sam paid no attention to, except to toss over a ball of candy or to comment on something on the TV every now and again. 

Little by little, Bucky moved from watching Sam/whatever Sam was watching from the kitchen to the dining table in the living room to the far end of the couch to the close end of the couch. If Bucky’s moving nearer to him each day bothered Sam, he didn’t show it. 

But Bucky was still an assassin and, more that that, he was still a brat from Brooklyn. So he couldn’t help but wonder how close was too close. Sitting on the arm of Sam’s easy chair as he watched TV wasn’t too close. Nor was sitting on the back of it. 

So one day, Sam got home with the Hobbit book (shut up, he refused to see the movies until he’d had a chance to read the book, okay?) to see Bucky sitting in his chair. 

"No. Nope. You do not take a man’s chair, James. That etiquette rule number 1. Off." 

Bucky blinked at him slowly and leaned back in the chair, settling in. Sam’s eyes narrowed slowly.

"I will sit on you, Barnes." 

When Bucky simply raised an eyebrow, Sam raised one back and shrugged. And, just as promised, he sat down on Bucky’s lap, opened his book and began to read. There was no shifting or twisting, just relaxed sitting. As if, having decided that Bucky was going to be his chair, Sam’s mind had made it reality and found it no less comfortable than a normal chair.

Bucky, on the other hand, was vaguely alarmed. He sat stiffly for the first half hour, having no idea what to do with himself. But when Sam snorted at something on the pages of his book, Bucky found himself glancing down over Sam’s shoulder to see what it was.

Which is how Steve and Natasha found them, fifty-seven minutes later. 

Steve blinked several times rapidly, unsure if he should, you know, leave the room, and Natasha simply raised an eyebrow.

"He was sitting in my seat. My seat, Steve." Sam said, not remotely apologetic and not even looking up from his book. 

After that Bucky seems to make a habit of either sitting in Sam’s seat or sitting right up next to Sam when he sits anywhere that the space allows for it. 

Sam is a little more physically affectionate with Bucky after that. He puts a hand on his arm or shoulder when he talks, lets a hand rest on Bucky’s head when he lays on the couch, even places a hand firmly on the back of Bucky’s neck when he lectures him for doing something stupid. 

After Steve puts it all together in his head, he mentions it to Natasha. She just rolls her eyes at him.

"Then you’re his cat too. He touches you the same way."

When Steve opens his mouth to protest that, to at least mention that it’s a totally different thing, she adds, “You groom Bucky, Steve. You make sure he keeps his hair and clothes clean. And I know you’ve bathed with him at LEAST once.”

Steve blinked hard, opening and closing his mouth.

"Seriously? Bucky may have been picked up off the street, but  _you_ followed him home.”


	10. Natasha and the Avengers (and Sam)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, I’m really productive when I don’t want to do homework.
> 
> So, indulge me. I’m low on prompts and kind of want more to do.

It started off innocently enough. Sam’s laptop had decided that it and Sam needed some space (they couldn’t even be friends apparently, a clean cut was needed) and died on him. So he was left using Steve’s, admittedly very nice Stark-issued laptop in the meantime. 

He had just been browsing a little, trying to figure out where he’d saved the video he’d just downloaded, when he came across a folder marked “Steve’s Porn”. He had stared at his computer for two full minutes before closing the laptop without even looking inside. 

Sam waited 27 hours before going back to it, thankful that Steve was on a mission so he wouldn’t have to stare/pointedly not stare/break into laughter at him every other hour as he had to the computer.

But eventually, his curiosity got the better of him and he finally forced himself to open up the folder.

The first image was of an older man that he didn’t recognize. The man was white and slightly balding. This was a touch more obvious thanks to the fact that he was sleeping with his head down on his desk, lips slightly parted as he breathed.

The next image was of another man sleeping. This one he vaguely recognized as one of the Avengers, the guy with the arrow. He was in a bed, arms up and half linked under the pillows, his clothes sleep ruffled enough to show a defined stomach and just a tease of his hips.

The next few were like that, of these two men, even a couple with the both of them together, interestingly (but still clothed, fortunately. Unfortunately? They were kind of attractive in their own way). Two of them had the arrow guy sporting squiggles and flowers and suns drawn onto his face. One (actually seven, he later realized) was of himself, sleeping on his stomach on his bed. He normally slept his blankets fully covering his entire body and in that picture, the person had lifted up the blankets in order to take a picture from under them.

He had been growing increasingly…not alarmed or weirded out really, but mostly confused. With all that internet, this was Steve’s version of porn? But then he saw the next picture. 

Of Steve.

He was in full uniform, standing up but listing to the side a little, a tiny hint of drool attempting to escape from his lips. 

Sam snorted and moved on. The next couple of pictures were of Steve. Then there were some of Stark and Potts and even one of Thor. 

Then he saw another picture of the arrow guy. But this time, he was with Natasha curled up with him, their foreheads touching and their legs tangled together. There was an arm in the picture, the suit clad arm of the man in the first picture, pulling up a blanket over the too of them.

Which was when Sam realized that this might…not actually be sleep porn.

""Steve’s Porn," really?" he asked one day over breakfast. Bucky looked up, startled, and Steve started choking hard on his food, clutching at his chest.

Natasha tilted her head at him. “I didn’t want anyone finding it. And that’s rude, by the way. I thought guys didn’t look at each other’s porn?”

"You titled it  _"Steve’s Porn._ " I can’t think of one person who  _wouldn’t_  want to see what kind of things he looked at.” Sam said pointedly. 

She opened her mouth and closed it thoughtfully. “Huh. So…Steve’s colonoscopy pics?”

"How about you just don’t save stuff on my computer?"

Her lip quirked up and she looked at him as if he told her he believed that she was never going to kill anyone again. Amused and a little patronizing. “Steve.  _Please._  Come on.”

Steve never did see what it was in that folder. He was a touch too wary of the possibility that it may actually be porn (Not so much because he had a problem with porn, but because Tony had made him was this thing with…with cups and …he was perfectly okay with not taking his chances, thanks).


	11. Game Night - The Avengers

Every now and again the Avengers have a bonding night of sorts. Movies or games are generally involved. Several of the Avengers, for better or for worse, tend to get a bit invested in these games. Thankfully, they try not to play for money/favors/skills more than once a month or so.

Bruce, thankfully, takes losing in stride. He knows the ridiculous type of people he’s playing with and goes into the games fully expecting to lose.

Thor is…alarmingly good at any game that requires luck or dice rolling. They kind of want to accuse him of some sort of mystical cheating (Tony definitely accuses him of cheating), but he looks so happy when he wins that they figure that they’ll just limit those kinds of games just in case.

Tony, of course, counts cards. It’s not cheating, technically. It’s just how his mind works! He can’t be expected to play cards blind.

Natasha cheats. They know she cheats. She knows they know she cheats. But they haven’t been able to actually catch her doing it and aren’t quite sure how they could even stop her if they wanted to.

Despite this, Steve tends to win any and all card games they play 60-70% of the time. Tony swears that he sees Natasha’s hair fluff up like she’s about to go Super Saiyan on Steve every time he beats her.

Clint doesn’t actually play any card games with them, though he’s more than happy to be the designated dealer. He gets a little into it, even buying a purple visor with a stylized A on it when they play.

The first time Sam drops by during one of their games, he’s actually with Bucky, having planned to pick up his newly modified wings from Tony’s lab. Sam pauses at the entryway and raises an eyebrow. “You’re playing poker? Seriously?”

"It’s fun," Natasha says with a shrug.

"…You know he cheats, right?" Bucky asked, sounding vaguely absentminded, as if this was something they obviously knew.

There is a silence as everyone turns to stare at Steve, who simply raises both eyebrows in insulted confusion.

"No. No, come on. Steve doesn’t cheat." Tony said, shaking the thought away.

Sam snorted. “I’m sorry, have you _met_ this asshole?”

Natasha’s eyes narrow slowly and she glares at him for a moment before realization dawns on her face. Her head swivels sharply to face Clint. “Did you know about this?” she asked him.

Clint leaned back in his seat and tapped the side of his right eye. “Yeah, of course. You should see the way he palms cards, Nat. It’s kind of an art.”

The group turns back to Steve, who gives them an innocent I’m Captain America, You Can Trust Me smile as he pushes back from his seat.

"Well. I think we’ve had enough games for today. Let’s just call this a draw." he said, all but sprinting out of the room.

"Rogers! I want my Roadster back you jackass!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Tesla Roadster is one of Tony's cars. This lovely thing: http://ironman.wikia.com/wiki/Tesla_Roadster


	12. Once Upon a Time - Thor and Tony (and a little Loki)

Thor makes an effort to complement Tony on his work properly whenever he can. In order to make sure that every compliment is sincere, he actually takes the time to learn more about the sort of workmanship used on Midgard.

It is…time consuming, he’ll admit, like taking 4 steps forward and then 7 steps back.

But it is, without a doubt, worth it. It’s worth it if only for the shy way Tony’s eyes dip or shift away as he smiles before he’s right back to boisterous grandstanding.

For all of the comparisons between his shield brother and the one he was raised with, Tony is much more self confident in a way.

And, as much as it pains him to even wonder of it, he can’t help but wonder what his brother…what they would _both_ be like had their father been lost to them as early as Tony’s had. If the loss of that influence (which, in hindsight, was just as toxic as it was emboldening), leaving them with their mother alone, would have been beneficial to his brother’s emotional development.

But there’s no changing the past (not without perhaps breaking the future, he’s sure), so Thor tries not to dwell too much on it.

If he sometimes spends his free time teaching himself of magical lore or practicing the minor spells that his brother had poured years into attempting to impart into him, once upon a time, that is no one’s business but his own.


	13. Peter Parker and one other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This one was kind of inspired by both the Amazing Spider-Man movies as well as the Ultimate Spider-Man comics.)

Richard Parker could be a little…kooky. This was especially true when it came to gifts. So his wife was nowhere even near the country of surprised when her husband returned home one day with the not-so-carefully wrapped black box he’d left just hours ago. He stares at her with the wide brown eyes their son inherited and she can’t help but roll her eyes.

“I told you.” She said simply.

The man just huffs, crossing his arms. “Oh, come on. It’s exactly like him! He could have at least-”

“Daddy?”

Both parents look up to see their four year old blinking blearily from the doorway to his bedroom. A worn looking blue blanket hangs from the hand that isn’t rubbing at his eyes as Peter yawns. “What’s that?” he asks, ever the curious little thing.

Richard starts, having forgotten about it, before beaming. He moves to kneel before the little boy, pulling off the navy blue ribbon and unwrapping the reset present.

“Well, it’s for you, Petey!” he said as he worked.

Peter frowned slightly in confusion. “It’s not my birthday though. Or Christmas.”

“Yeah…I was going to give this to your uncle but he said that he wouldn’t be caught- that he wanted you to have it. So that you’d think of him and you’d always know that he was watching over you.” Which was technically true. He had totally said those things.

Inside the box is a stuffed animal, simple but a touch stylized.

Peter loves it. It’s cool and edgy and makes him feel like he has an awesome guard animal that can and will happily eat any and all cockroaches that would DARE to encroach on his territory! (This is not true. Not at all. May develops a twitch that shows itself every time she has to wash that thing’s face. She dies a little inside)

While the stuffed protector does spend a couple years in a box under the bed later on, it finds its way back onto Peter’s shelf not long after he turns 15. Then behind his pillow just before he turns 18.

It’s well over a decade after he’d first received it that Peter comes to discover the actual significance of the toy (he’d never had the chance to ask his father and it really never occurred to him to question anyone else), but until that time it stands majestic, always turned to stare off into the sunset.

The mighty pirate panther.


	14. Tony Stark and Harry Osborn

Harry Osborn has a really good view of the Avengers Tower from his office. He isn’t sure if the windows are just really clean or if they’ve been updated with some sort of zooming capacity, but he can see the tower well enough to see Tony Stark himself at times.

The first time Harry sees him, Tony is just casually passing through what looks to be a penthouse den. The man pauses, as if feeling Harry’s eyes on him and turns to face the window. He glares at Harry with the sort of passion not normally reserved for someone you’ve probably met all of twice.

Harry stills and stares back for a minute, vaguely alarmed, before he forces himself to turn away from the window.

It happens again later in the week, culminating with Tony shaking his fist in the air at him.

Fortunately, Harry was never the type to back down from a fight. He glares and sneers and once, memorably, even engages in a bird flipping contest.

It was…an interesting source of relief.

Nonetheless, he has a business to run. Despite the less than stellar record he had off at boarding school, he does know better than to actively antagonize his competitors, especially one as powerful as Tony Stark. So he stops.

It’s two weeks before he sees Stark again.

He returns from a meeting to find the man in his office, leaning against the window and staring out at the traffic below.

“Can I help you?” Harry asks, his tone nice and even.

Stark looks up and slowly turns around so that his back is resting fully against the window. “You okay, kid? You haven’t been turning up to our tri-weekly glare-offs.”

Harry blinked several times rapidly. “…What.”

Stark just raised his eyebrows. “Glare-off? ‘You won’t beat me this time, asshole…’ nothing? I thought we were having fun?”

It took a moment for Harry to find his voice and when he did, it came out as a snort. “Are you kidding me?” he asked.

Stark just grinned, wide and pleased like a kid. “Come on, gotta get the aggression out somehow, right? Gotta say you’re much better at this than your old man was.”

“I doubt he knew it was a game.”

Stark freezes at that, an expression of vague alarm appearing on his face. “I…huh…that’s good…to…know.” He shakes the thought away with a shrug.

“Anyway, I just came down to check on you, that’s all. And…because Barton says that I’m required to actually notify people before I start a prank war.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed slowly at him. “You…don’t actually think you can out-prank me, do you?”

Stark’s eyes widen a touch and he looks insulted and wary. He brings his index and middle fingers up to his own eyes slowly before using them to point at Harry as he slowly backed out of the room.

Harry forced himself to bite back down on the grin that threatened to bloom onto his face as he went over to his desk and pulled up his browser.

He had work to do.


	15. If you can't stand the heat... - The Avengers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit longer than the others.  
> Devoted to cooking!  
> (the note at the end is just a little blurb or PS onto the story)

Finally living together means that the Avengers become privy to certain aspects of each other’s daily lives. One of these aspects was cooking.

Each of the Avengers has varying levels of skill in the kitchen.

Natasha is just utterly horrible in the kitchen. Alarmingly so. Which is not to say that she doesn’t like cooking. She enjoys watching other people cook and has a deep seated fascination in all the ways that chefs and bakers can make something amazing out of ordinary little things. So, every now and again, when she’s fairly certain that she’ll be alone for a while, she tries to make something. On those days, she has Jarvis turn off the video surveillance and fire alarms to make sure that no one is alerted to her mistakes.

So it’s safe to say that Steve and Sam are more than a little bit surprised to stumble upon Natasha cooking one day. She’s standing before the stove, staring at it with wide eyes. There’s a pot there filled with boiling water.

The pot is also on fire.

Sam stares at the scene before him like he isn’t sure whether to be amused or alarmed by it. Steve opens and closes his mouth. It takes him a moment to finally find his voice and choke out, "…What?"

Natasha startles (it’s subtle, but they know her well enough by now to notice it) and looks over her shoulder at them. "I…have no idea how this happened." She admitted before simply walking out, leaving them with what may very well be the first sign of the apocalypse.

Sam slowly nears the stove and grabs a metal spoon to nudge the pot over to one of the cool areas of the flat stove. The pot remains on fire and the burner he’d moved it from…isn’t even that warm. Steve grabs for the fire extinguisher and, without talking, they simply decide that they were just never going to speak about this.

Tony doesn’t really cook. He will generally what someone else has made, snack on something small and light, or make himself a smoothie (which he’s actually pretty damn good at if he’s going out of his way to make it actually taste good, thank you very much). He just knows himself well enough not to bother. Cooking is not really a thing he enjoys (more chemistry than he generally likes to bother with), so he gets bored or distracted and ends up burning whatever he’d put on the stove or in the oven.

Which is not to say that he doesn’t know how. He can tell from a glance whether or not too much rosemary or not enough salt is being used. He just can’t be bothered to put it into practice.

Bruce is actually a decent, if unorthodox, cook. Due to spending so many years overseas, he’s found it necessary to learn how to cook for himself properly. And, because Bruce actually likes to eat _good_ food, he made sure to learn how to cook from the locals.

On the other hand, it’s also due to Bruce’s cooking that most of them hear Steve really curse for the first time. It’s not so much that Steve doesn’t curse. The soldier just generally prefers to keep his curses to the milder one (damn, bastard, shit, jackass, etc.) in normal company and to even lighter ones (darn, hell) for formal company.

That night Bruce offers, at Tony’s prodding, to cook them dinner. It was a dish he’d been taught during a stint in India. They’re all a little excited to try something new, to eat something that one of their own has made. What Bruce sets before each of them, some sort of brown rice with flavored curry, looks and smells delicious.

But there’s a bit of nervousness there too. They sit in silence for a moment, looking at each other with nervous smiles on their faces. Steve, as in most cases, is the first to break the ice. He casually takes in a spoonful of the meal.

Then slowly sets the spoon down.

"Fucking hell, Bruce."

He said breathily. Steve closed his eyes, propped his elbow on the table and pressed the curve between his thumb and forefinger over his eyebrows. He was silent for a moment, taking a deep breath, before he leaned back and down his entire glass of water. The he took Tony’s and downed that as well.

Tony, Clint and Natasha nudged the plates away as one.

Thor watched the happenings with mild amusement and curiosity. With a smile, he took a bite from his own plate. For a moment the Asgardian looked delighted as he chewed. As he swallowed, he blinked several times rapidly. His head was tilted slightly and there was a half-smile on his face as if he was trying to decide whether or not what he was feeling was a pleasant sensation.

It wasn’t.

Thor took his own glass and took a long sip from it. "It is… a bit spicy." He admitted.

Bruce just smiled sheepishly at his friends.

While he is not one for conventional kitchen cooking, Thor is a master on the grills. He is generally the one that ends up in charge whenever there is a barbeque to be had. Those are, however, few and far between. Not because they don’t like the taste of what he cooks (it’s masterful, with just the perfect touch of seasoning), but because they don’t like _what_ he cooks.

He’s grilled them cat (Steve just about died), a colossal squid ( _what the heck?)_ , a Pyrenean Ibex (extinct, so once again, _what?_ ) and a Snervian blork worm, which they simply chose not to question.

Before the new century, Steve’s sense of cooking basically amounted to boiling most things. Bucky had always been the better cook, learning how to make a couple of easy meals and sweets for the two of them when he could manage to afford it. But Steve does enjoy cooking, if only because it reminded him of being able to be helpful (useful) in this one little thing. Boiling and chopping, that he could do.

He’s gotten much better in the time that he’s been awake though. He has both the time and resources for it now. He’d say that breakfast foods are his forte, though. Strawberry pancakes, eggs spiced and over easy, cinnamon laced French toast, etc.

He’s not sure whether Jarvis has somehow managed to connect the vents in the kitchen to those in lab or if Tony ‘breakfast food senses’ have simply started tingling. He does know that whenever he makes a large breakfast he eventually turns around to find Tony in the kitchen. No matter how busy or sleepy he’d been, Tony comes every time.

On the days that he has clearly been up for too long, Tony stumbles into the kitchen with a cup of coffee in hand, definitely half asleep, kneels before the ever growing stack of pancakes and just _stares_ like a cat watching some sort of ridiculously awe inspiring act of God. It lasts until he’s either awake enough to be able to eat without choking or enough to realize how odd he must look.

Natasha generally enters the kitchen after Tony, with or without Clint. She usually stands next to or right up behind him while he cooks, watching every single move he makes. The first time she does that, he’s vaguely alarmed by it. But seeing the way her shoulders relax and her eyes fall close the first time she takes a bite puts him at ease.

If Steve comes to start cooking nearly every day that he’s at the tower, there really isn’t a reason for it. Really.

Clint, to the surprise of everyone but Natasha, actually knows how to cook. Well.

He doesn’t do it often and rarely does it for anyone other than Natasha or Phil.

But it’s Natasha’s birthday and after she had threatened to castrate Tony if he threw her a party, she’d asked for a homemade cake. When Steve offered to make one for her, she had simply stared at Clint until he’d acquiesced with a sigh. She had smiled at that, just a little quirk of the lips, before turning to her teammates. "You’ll love this. Trust me."

Later on, Tony was the first to try what looked to be a chocolate cake. To be honest, he’d spent the entire _day_ bouncing on his toes in anticipation of the teasing he’d get to do.

Natasha had a alarm inducing smile on her face as she watched Clint set out the small plates of cake. Normally, that would be reason enough for Tony to consider hanging back for a bit but right now he really wanted to see what her fuss was about. The cake had to be pretty decent if Natasha wanted it for her birthday.

Unless her gift was the looks on their faces as they bit into something horrible.

That thought caused Tony to pause with the forkful half way to his mouth. He shrugged it off. It looked decently made and there was nothing a mouthful of vodka couldn't erase later.

So he took a bite and chewed. After he swallowed, he stared down at the cake before him.

"What the _fuck_ am I eating? Where did you get this?" he asked.

Clint frowned at the reaction, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning a hip against the dining table. "It's just a Joffre cake. Chocolate. I ... _made_ it." he said.

Tony looked up at the archer, his eyes narrowing slightly. "I've had Joffre cake before, okay? I've had _good_ Joffre cake. This is not 'good' Joffre cake. Someone had to sell their soul to make this. _Where. Did. You. Get. It."_

Clint just stared at him with both eyebrows raised. Natasha's smile widened into a grin.

"He actually did make it. I was with him the whole time." she said, pleased.

Tony's gaze bounced from Clint to Natasha and back again to simply _stare_ at Clint with wide eyes. Bruce leaned over Tony's shoulder and took his fork, breaking off a small piece of Tony's cake for himself.

The sound he made when he put it in his mouth was more than a little obscene. When he looked up at Clint, he looked a little dazed. "You made this? In a kitchen?" he asked in awe.

Clint scratched slightly at the back of his neck, growing increasingly uncomfortable with the praise.

"Will you marry me?" Tony blurted out suddenly.

Clint started, "Wha- No! You're with Pepper!"

"She'd understand!"

"No!"

"Um.." Bruce interrupted, "If we finish this cake, is there a chance of getting any more?" he asked, staring at the leftover pieces longingly.

"Uh, yeah. There's another cake in the kitchen."

Bruce's eyes darted from the cake before him to the kitchen entryway as if wondering how quickly he could get to that cake once he finished the one before him.

"Okay. Both of you need to just calm down, alright? I'm sure if you're good, Clint will be happy to make another cake for you on your own birthdays." Steve said, coming over to place a firm hand on the shoulders of both men.

Tony was suddenly standing up like a shot. "Steve! _You don't understand._ My birthday is _months_ from now!" he all but cried gripping Steve's collar.

Steve's stared down at the man for a moment before glancing at Clint over Tony's head. "What did you put in that cake?" he mouthed.

Clint just shrugged.

When Pepper stopped by less than a hour later, having planned for some quality girl time after her meetings, she was more than a little surprised by the scene before her. It wasn't everyday that she came home to see a group of grown men sitting around the living room with Thanksgiving stomachs and thick cake smudges on their faces, staring at the ceiling looking either blissed out of their minds or as if they were contemplating their life choices.

She closed her eyes and ran a hand over her face. Natasha and Clint waved at her from the island counter, one smugly and one sheepish, looking worryingly normal in comparison.

"Did...did you drug them?"

"God, I wish. This'd be much less weird." Clint muttered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just because I feel like I should add on this comment to the fic:   
> SecretStorywriter: I like the idea that Tony can cook, but I wonder how true it is since he probably had Jarvis around when he was younger. (And yet, I can still picture Tony Stark cooking decently enough if he had to.)  
> On a side note - I can totally imagine Natasha watching Clint make the cake. She probably sat on the counter in silence for most of the ordeal, I'm guessing, wordlessly passing ingredients to Clint who grew more and more frustrated since she has absolutely no idea what she is doing even if she's trying to just occupy time.
> 
> Notoyax17: I think Tony understands the concept of cooking (good attention to detail, generally) so he can tell when somethings WRONG. But actually cooking...well, not as great. He could probably walk someone with more skill through the process of cooking a meal, if that makes sense (though they'd be a lot of "I said to add 2.3 milligrams, not 2.7! Why are you using spoons?!"  
> And YES to your Natasha headcanon. She's generally helpful, sure. But she'll also start passing over stuff that shouldn't even be in the kitchen, let alone in the food (Bleach - don't you need to clean the dishes, Clint? Throwing knives - They're sharper. Baseball cap - to keep your hair out of your face, Clint. "You haven't even MOVED! Where are you getting this stuff?!").


	16. Motherfucking Disney! - Phil, Natasha and Clint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to admit that this one ran away from me a little bit. It was actually supposed to be connected to the story I'm doing next, as the beginning, and one thing sort of led to another...

It's not really a secret that both Clint and Natasha have a soft spot for all things Disney. Growing up the way that they did, they were bound to find some solace losing themselves in the magic, in the childhood dreams that never were.

That said, it's a well kept secret that their love of Disney wasn't actually developed until well into their adulthood's. Or that Phil was the reason why.

What should have been a routine milk run in Budapest for Strike Team Delta went FUBAR sharply and quickly far too early into the mission to have been anything other than planned.

And fuck if Phil didn't hate being out-planned.

They sat curled up and possibly surrounded in a shed that might as well have been a closet for all the space it offered. Natasha's eyes were closed and her head tilted back to rest against the rotting wood. One hand was pressed against the bullet wound in her abdomen, trying to stop the blood flow or at least slow it down. Her other hand rested lightly on the ankle she'd curled under her, one Phil was fairly certain was broken.

Clint and Phil hadn't fared much better.

Phil took in a slow quiet breath as he watched his team. Both looked so worn. And tired. And _young_. Seeing them like that, like beaten down dogs waiting for the end and wondering how painful it would be, tore at something deep down it felt as if he'd long since forgotten about.

"Natasha. Clint."

Clint blinked his eyes open blearily while Natasha simply let her head roll towards him to show her attention.

"We...we are going to get out of this."

Both just snorted in reply.

"I'm serious. And if... _when_ we get out of here, all of us, you guys are going to get a big reward. Whatever you want or wherever you want, I'll make it happen. I swear."

Clint let out a huffy little laugh, cringing and doubling over slightly at the way it jerked at no less than three broken ribs. "What, you working with the Make a Wish Foundation now, Boss? You gonna take us to Disney World?" Clint asked dryly as Natasha's lips quirked up.

"If you want."

Both startled at that, actually looking him in the eyes for the first time since they'd gotten there.

"Are you serious?" Natasha asked in confusion.

Phil turned just enough to look at her and keep Clint in the corner of his vision. "Sure. We'll take a week. I'm sure we're all pretty long overdue."

Clint blinked several times rapidly. "And...you'd come with us." he said, like a statement with just a hint of question in it.

"If you want me, yes."

The two assassins just stared at Phil for what was almost an uncomfortable amount of time.

"They have a castle there." Natasha said after a moment.

"And splash rides." Clint added.

"We could dress up."

"And meet all those characters."

They turned to Phil again as one. "And you'll come with us," they said in unison, something like hope and determination spilling into their features.

Phil offered them a smile and nodded, "Yes, of course."

Natasha leaned back against her wall as a slow, surprisingly evil, smile grew onto her face. "We're going to _Disney World_." she said like a promise, something like venom bleeding into her voice.

"Damn straight. We're going to burn these fuckers straight to _hell_." Clint said, grinning just as evilly.

Phil almost felt guilty for the terror he'd unleashed upon the unsuspecting terrorist organization.

Mostly he was just tired and proud and grateful and pleased that they were on his side.

And, he had to admit, watching a pair of master assassins running around like toddlers on crack dressed as Hercules and Cinderella (not in the ordered you'd think) was a little bit more amusing than it was alarming.

And he liked to think he made a pretty decent Aladdin.


	17. Dog Piles - The Avengers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for a prompt on tumblr from patchesgryphon: [Avengers dog piles on the couch, maybe watching movies or something?]
> 
> As said before, this is a continuation of the Disney ficlet right before this chapter. Not necessary to read/reread first, but it makes more sense that way)

It’s not really a secret that both Clint and Natasha have a soft spot for all things Disney. It had become a sort of ritual to make time to watch every Disney (and Pixar and sometimes Dreamworks, because goddamn those movies got crazy) movie that came out, regardless of whether or not it was one that interested them. Most of them were surprisingly enjoyable.

Before New York, they would break into Phil's apartment and set things up. By the time Phil got home, he'd have a pair of assassins curled up on his couch, butter stained from having eaten too much popcorn while they'd waited, with the menu screen of whatever movie they'd chosen playing on repeat. 

If he'd been a little too late getting home, he generally knew he'd find Natasha humming the tune of the movie's title menu and lobbing popcorn into Clint's mouth from halfway across the room in time with the beat.

Phil was always grateful that both of them at least had decent aim.

For about the first six months after New York, neither of them can bring themselves to watch any of the movies. Even after that, they can't bring themselves to go see any of the newer ones. 

But finally, nine months after Phil's death, Clint's curiosity gets the better of him and he finally rents Brave.

He's a little in love.

The movie itself is okay, but Merida ....and her archery...Clint now fully understands the meaning of the word 'nerdgasm.'

So he makes Natasha watch it with him, chattering on excitedly about all the things that they got right, how this girl was clearly himself in a past life or something, and oh my god did you see that Nat?!

She just takes it all in with poorly contained amusement, curled up next to Clint on the couch so he doesn't have to reach too far when he grabs her arm and points at something on the screen excitedly.

Clint may or may not leave the animators of that movie a gift basket of some of his not-lethal trick arrows with a Merida plushie in thanks.

On that evening, they're in the main living room, loading up Up (yet another movie that they hadn't had a chance to see, despite its age) onto the massive television Tony had installed on that floor. The Pixar logo is just playing across the screen when Steve walks in. His face actually brightens into something hopeful. It's almost painful.

"Oh, they're part of Disney, right?" he asked.

Natasha nodded and offered him a smile, Clint patting the seat on the large couch next to him. "Always room for more when it comes to Disney, man." he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

Steve sat down next to them, a relieved but uncertain smile on his lips. He still wasn't sure if he'd been interrupting anything (no one knew what those two were to each other, to be honest. Steve wasn't entirely sure that they weren't secretly married or something) but he was glad for the chance to be able to watch Disney with people again. Watching it alone...brought up a few too many memories of hanging out in theaters with Bucky, watching the latest cartoon.

They were all of thirty seconds into the movie when suddenly Tony was dashing into the room and unplugging the TV. He stood half doubled over, panting for a moment, before straightening up. 

"What the hell are you two doing! You can't let him watch that!" he barked once he could breath again. 

Natasha stood up and moved around Tony to plug the TV back in and restart the movie. Her eyes narrow in warning as she passes him and he freezes, allowing her to do what she wants. "We were watching a movie, Stark." she says coolly.

"Up, though? Are you kidding me? Guy hasn't seen a Disney movie in decades and you want to start him off with Up?" he bites back.

Clint frowned as he leaned forward, grabbing the remote and pulling the start menu back up and pressing play again, already fast forwarding.

"What's the big deal?"

Rather than attempt to stop the movie again (he liked his hands where they were, thank you), Tony immediately rounded the couch and covered Steve's eyes with his hands. The soldier let out a low sigh and grabbed at Tony's hands and tried to pull them off. Tony leaned closer, his chest against the back of Steve's head to hold on tighter. 

"Nope, nope. Not going to happen buddy."

Steve paused for a moment, letting his hands fall to his sides. Then he suddenly reached up and gripped Tony by his biceps, lifting him bodily and turning and flipping him over the couch. Tony released him in shock, landing with his head in Steve's lap and his legs hanging off the arm of the couch. Tony just blinked up at his teammate, stunned into silence.

Clint snorted, looking highly pleased as he paused the movie to look at Tony. "Seriously?"

Tony just scowled up at him. " "Seriou-" Have you guys seen this movie?" he asked. When the two simply raised their eyebrows at him, Tony's eyes grew wide.

Tony turned to look at Clint and then Natasha. "Oh...wow, you guys really haven't... Listen, you guys can't let him watch this first. I am perfectly secure in my masculinity and I can tell you that I cried during that movie."

Steve just stared at him, clearly bewildered, while Clint and Natasha looked dubious, if not amused.

"It's like, one point five times worse than that scene in The Lion King." he clarified. 

Both assassins instantly recoiled (which Tony had to admit was a bit satisfying) and Clint immediately shut the TV off. 

Steve sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose. "Guys, come on. I'm not...fragile." he said, his frustration starting to bleed through. "They're kid's movies. I think I can take it." he added.

Clint and Natasha stared at him for a moment before sharing a look. Natasha got up and moved to sit between Steve and Clint. She leaned forward so that when she turned halfway to face him, she was looking up at him. 

"People do die in these movies. They are murdered or broken or ripped away too soon. For all that these are children's movies, they play on adult fears. We're not going to watch it yet." she said solemnly. 

Steve stared at her for a long moment, at the surprising amount of sincerity in her expression, and nodded slowly. 

"Wasn't in the mood for something sad anyway." Clint said, making sure to press the eject button the remote before turning the TV back on.

"Let's start with something fun." he said, scanning through the collection Jarvis was pulling up on the DVR. 

Tony shifted a little to get more comfortable, not even bothering to move from where he was lying on Steve. "Maybe start with a classic to get in the groove? Hey, Jarvis! Start up Aladdin." 

Natasha shrugged at the couch and leaned back in her seat as Jarvis pulled the movie up.

They had just reached the part where Aladdin was trying to steal some bread when Natasha noticed a presence behind them. She tilted her head back. Bruce was standing there, cup of coffee in hand, looking like he'd gotten distracted halfway through a step and hadn't set his foot down yet. 

She let out a soft amused huff, getting Clint's attention. He tilted his head back and smiled. "Hey, come join us." he said.   
Bruce startled, caught. "Oh, um, I was just on my way back to the lab."

"Aladdin's on, no one's leaving." Tony said absently, only just barely listening to them. Bruce chuckled softly but after a moment did come to sit next to Tony's legs on the arm of the chair.

It wasn't much longer before Thor found them as well. Which had absolutely nothing to do with an AI with far too much interest in their team bonding.

Tony glanced around at the team. Clint and Natasha sitting (snuggling? Yeah, no. He wasn't about to call it that even in the safety of his own head) close together. Then Steve, whose hand had come to rest just over his arc reactor, the other arm resting along the back of the couch.

Bruce was still sitting on the arm of the couch and Thor was standing right behind Clint and Natasha's head, those broad arms folded over the back of the couch as he leaned forward. And it just all looked too  _clustered._

"Jarvis, more space." he called out suddenly. His teammates startled, half of them looking ready to vacate the couch. Before any of them could manage that though, the couch started unfolding itself, the legs pulling up and the back falling backwards. Even the arms falling outward to add more space.

"The fuck is your couch, man!" Clint barked, having to grab hold of Natasha's arm to keep from falling back at the sudden change, only to bring her down with him. Bruce hopped up as Tony's legs flattened out. Steve, thanks to a really good reaction time, managed to stay upright (barely). Only Thor managed to be unaffected, simply taking a step back as the couch fell apart and sitting down by Clint's head once it seemed to settle.

The movie, paused automatically, moved from the TV screen to...the ceiling? It was being projected on the ceiling tiles now, still just as clear as it had been on the big screen. The lights in the room dimmed as well.

Tony reached out with a foot, using it to hook around Bruce's back to bring him back to the couch. The man nearly toppled over on top of him from the unexpected action, just barely saved by Steve's quick reflexes.

They only managed to make it through four and a third movies that night.

 

James Rhodes bit back a yawn as he directed some of his men back to the convoy. There were in the middle of a minor extraction mission in Kazakhstan in what still felt like the middle of night but was actually the middle of the day there. 

His phone buzzed in his pocket, four short buzzes. He sighed softly, unable to help the little twinge of worry that bubbled up whenever Jarvis himself sent Rhodey a message. When he opened the message, all he could do was twitch. 

The message was simply a picture. Thor was sleeping on the couch, arms spread out wide to either side of him. On his right were Natasha and Clint, who were sleeping on his arm. Natasha was spooning Clint while the archer was clutching Thor's forearm under his arm like a pillow. Steve was sleeping on Thor's other arm, head turned towards the Asgardian and drooling lightly into his shoulder. 

Tony was sleeping with his face buried into Steve's stomach, arms wrapped around the soldier's waist while one of Steve's arms lay draped over Tony's back. Bruce was last, sleeping on his stomach at the foot of the makeshift bed. He was using Tony's legs as a pillow and his lips were parted, teeth slightly bared, clearly having nibbled on the now damp pant legs in his sleep. Thor's legs were resting on his back while Natasha's were stuffed under his thighs.

Rhodey snorted softly. "Jarvis, you bastard." he muttered with a growing smile as he saved the photo on his phone, his email, the cloud and then sent a copy to Pepper, Happy and Sitwell.

 


	18. Nightmares - The Avengers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These things are supposed to be snippets! I told myself that this would only take an hour, tops! 
> 
> ...It's all kind of running away from me.

Considering that they are a team of superheroes responsible for making and keeping the world safe, it can be a touch alarming to admit that the Avengers are a group of functioning insomniacs.

Tony is the highest of high functioning insomniacs. Despite being the oldest of their group (sort of technically, physically. Thor is the exception to every rule) and, quite frankly, the most human, he gets the least amount of sleep.

A large part of the reason for that is because sleep is for wimps and he's got fucking science to do! He's got so many laws of physics to make, break and shake up that there just isn't really enough time to sleep.

Which isn't to say that he actually enjoys sleeping when he can. He doesn't. If it isn't the nightmares (the shouting in a foreign language, the people he loves being shot down, broken, _tortured_ for revenge), it's the waking up. It's opening his eyes in the middle of the night and having the lights that peek in from the edges of the curtains dance along the ceiling tiles like stars.

And in that moment, for just a moment, he wonders if the friends and the happiness and the _miracles_ he's seen since then were just an oxygen deprived dream.

So, no, Tony doesn't sleep often.

Every now and then, he will go to sleep of course. For one stupid reason or another. Because he passed out (from lack of sleep. Go figure. No avoiding that though, he's tried) or because some fucking AI who will not be named with too much time on his hands went and decided to drug his coffee like some sort of evil coffee ruining dictator.

(Seriously, what the hell happened to do no harm? _"According to the coding that you yourself placed at the very core of my programming, Sir, my objectives are to first and foremost protect and provide for your physical wellbeing. Protecing your body from harm and withering takes prescendence over commiting no crimes against your person. Sir."_ ....What? WHAT? I swear to god, I should have never let you talk to Phil. First Pepper, now...)

On those days, when he wakes up and just can't bring himself to sleep again, Tony tries to keep himself busy. Usually, he'll settle for just blowing shit up in his lab. Other times...other times he'll sit at his bench, pull up his laptop or tablet and listen to the video footage of Pepper singing along poorly (so poorly, SO poorly, oh my god) with Rhodey (actually kind of decently) to Camp Rock - We Rock on the Disney Sing It video game. Among others. (So many, they seriously just went through the whole game when they thought he wasn't home.)

If Tony's body just happens to fall into a sleep-like state (that's totally not the same as sleeping. He's just meditating...really), it's really no one's business but his own.

  
Thor technically requires the least amount of sleep. The days on Asgard are somewhat longer than those on Midgard. Not to mention that Thor can draw in short bursts of electricity like shots of coffee. Which is not to say that he gets the least amount of sleep. Considering the people he lives with, that's no surprise. He is a god from another realm! And, in all honesty, the fact that he is the most well adjusted person in the building (assuming Jarvis is not included in the count) sometimes leads him to wonder how this realm has managed to keep itself relatively safe for so long.

So long as he's in a good mood, Thor sleeps like a starfish. Whether on his stomach or on his back, Thor tends to sleep with his arms and/or legs spread out wide and utterly still except for the heavy heaving of his chest with each breath, his hair pillowed out around him. But then there are other days when he sleeps on his side, not curled up at all except for the arms wrapped around his pillow.

When he simply can't manage rest at all, Thor tends to go out onto the balcony on his floor. He sits cross legged and stares out at the stars. He takes in the peaceful sort of restlessness in the city below, contrasting with the supposeded stillness of the stars, and thinks of home.

  
Steve doesn't require as much sleep as most people, super serum and all that. But when he does sleep, he dreams of Peggy standing alone in a dance hall, checking the clock hour after hour until she sits in the silence and stares at the ceiling. He dreams of Bucky, with a name and a number the only things that can escape his lips. He dreams of the light leaving his best friend's eyes as he hits the ground, of his lips turning blue and cold as a halo of crimson spreads in the snow beneath him. And sometimes, he dreams of the Howard he knew, somehow so young while seeming so old, flying miles and miles straight into a storm on hope alone.

He'll go to sleep when he needs to, when he absolutely can't stand to be awake any longer. But only then.

And when he wakes up, always too early, he heads to the gym and sets up a punching bag. Or two.

It's through that "coping mechanism" of his that he comes to find out that Natasha doesn't sleep much either.

Natasha dreams of blood. Of gallons spilled and graveyards filled, all by her own hand. She, at least, knows better than her comrades. Humans require sleep and so sleep she gets, as light and harried as it is. If she wakes up, she'll roll over and still herself until sleep comes again.

She only sleeps 4 hours a night. 4 is enough to manage. To not be compromised.

So she's up. She's found that there are few problems whose symptoms can't be eased by hitting stuff and breaking shit. Boxing with Steve comes to be very revitalizing. She finds herself teaching him better holds and tumbles over the course of their training.

One day she takes him to the Dollar Store. She grabs a shopping cart and, to his confusion and vague alarm, buys a hundred china plates.

Steve has to admit that using china as "frisbee darts" on the range is both guilt inducing as well as pretty freaking fun.

But, when the dreams are bad, when she just can not shake the wet sticky feeling in her hands, she finds Clint. She steals into his bed and curls into him, the octopus immediately fitting himself around her perfectly. Though she kind of misses breaking into Phil's apartment on the days that Clint was away. She misses curling up on his couch and waking up to Phil waving a cup of coffee under his nose and telling her that seriously, she has a key, stop doing that, it's freaking out the doorman.

She misses it like a favorite shirt, something so sentimental even though there are many alternatives that are... just as good.

She knows Clint does too.

Clint doesn't dream of his time under Loki's thrall as often as even he expected. He does dream of it, of course. He does dream of sitting close with men that are evil even by Clint's loose standards. Of driving arrows into the hearts and necks of people that he's fought alongside. Of wishing more than anything for Loki's pleased smiles and praise.

He does dream of those things, obviously. But mostly, he dreams of numbers. He dreams of being bundled and packaged and caged like an animal in a plane. He dreams of the threats and the bribes. He dreams of the cold metal nestled against the nape of his neck and staring down into a crowd. Of people and families.

And counting.

1, 2, 3, .... 8, 9, 10. Reload. 11, 12, 13...19, 20, 21. Reload.

He dreams of the realization that, for all of Natasha's notoriaty, he has a much higher body count under his name.

When Clint has nightmares, he tends to go to the range and shoot until his fingers bleed or crawl into Natasha's bed for the few hours left that she insists on sleeping through. When that isn't enough, he sits outside, curled up on his balcony on a fucking massive fluffy pillow, so high off the ground, and imagines that he's sitting on a cloud.

It isn't long before he starts to notice Thor not 3 floors down. The first couple of times, Clint just leaves him be. But one day he rappels down with his huge pillow and sits down text to the god. It's nice.

Some days they just sit in silence for hours, side by side or back to back. Other days, Thor points out stars and constellations and the stories behind them. Clint isn't sure if Thor actually knows them all or if he's making half of that shit up. He's settled on assuming it's a mix of both. Or that people in the past spent most of their time high/drunk out of their minds. It's a toss up.

Clint names the birds that pass them by and makes up stories of his own about them and their lives. Harold the pigeon seems to have developed an very unrequited crush on Maggie the Magpie. Update: she seems to like the diamond cufflink (that totally wasn't stolen...really) that Clint had given to Harry and it looks like they're at least friends now. Maybe.

Bruce doesn't dream. He hasn't since the experiment. Sometimes there are flashes of something nightmare like, like a flash show of his worst memories. But they're generally short lived and quickly fade. Normally, it's just a blackness, with Bruce left with his own thoughts. A deep dark emptiness, the Hulk's deep rumbling the only thing to keep him company.

He'd initally thought it to be the other guy's bubbling anger set to a low burn. But now, he's not entirely sure why, he likes to believe that it's just the sound of the other guy snoring. It's an admittedly weird thought.

Some days, he can't quite tolerate the darkness and he sets off for something else to do.

It makes him feel grateful (if a little guilty) that Tony is awake so often. Usually they just science it up (dear lord, sometimes he regrets having met Darcy a little) in the lab. But on some days, bad days when he wakes up with the sensation of having crushed a body in his hands, they do something else.

For all that Tony Stark seems oblivious to the pain of others, he is not. He's almost as good as Clint at noticing changes in the moods of the people around him (which is actually pretty freaking alarming to think about at times). He simply makes an active decision to ignore it until he thinks it's necessary to step in. Unless he's so deeply engrossed in something that he hasn't even noticed anyone enter the room.

On the bad days, they play games. Horrible, possibly sociopathic, and usually hypothetical games. They speculate as to how they (individually or collectively) would take over the world. How their teammates would do it. How they'd stop an evil clone of themselves from doing it.

There was play acting involved. And cackling. And then they went and made a video game (that will never be released to the public obviously) about it. Steve is usually the hero of the game, with each of their team either defeated, recruited or both along the way.

They plot ways of fucking with Reed Richards. They create an invisible dye that presents as green in the low sort of light used in elevators and dump an unreasonable amount into Osborn's pipes in the middle of the night. They hack into the security cameras at Oscorp and watch clips of men and women staring at their new CEO from behind in unadulterated horror for two hours until the kid happens to look down at his hands and lets out an alarmed _hiss_ before turning up to glare in the direction of the cameras.

While Tony certainly doesn't pretend to be a good influence, he is, without a doubt, a great friend.


	19. Mi Casa Es Su Casa - Natasha and the Avengers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes this stuff comes out of nowhere...

 

He almost didn't catch it. Steve jerked to a halt and blinked slowly. He looked over his shoulder at Natasha, who had just poured herself a glass of orange juice and was making her way back towards to doorway that he was standing in.

She was dressed in a sweatshirt that was large and fell halfway to her knees like a dress. It was thick and SHIELD grey, with its emblem just below the left shoulder. It was well worn, felt like the insides of the thick comforters that Tony had in all of their bedrooms and somehow always smelled like lavender and wet wool no matter how many times it was washed.

Steve knew these things because it was his sweatshirt.

"That's my shirt." he said.

Natasha pause, about to take another sip from her glass, and raised an eyebrow at him. "No it's not. It's mine." she said.

Steve squinted at her and blinked hard twice. What was she playing at? "It has my name on it." he said. And it did, in black curvy font, etched into the fabric just below the SHIELD emblem.

"So?"

"So? I- Natasha, you can't just take other people's stuff."

That earned him a small frown from her. "I didn't. It's my shirt."

Steve paused and frowned himself. He considered arguing further but decided against it at the look on her face. It was almost (almost) vulnerable. He sighed softly. "Right, sorry."

Natasha nodded and gave him a smirk, leaving the room while Steve fought the urge to grab the shirt off her and run away screaming "IT'S MINE, JERK!"

He might be able to outrun her, but he doubted it work any better on her than it had on Bucky.

 

  
Thor was easy enough. He had no problem giving up a hair brush or four so long as she left him with one. It was worth the amusement to see the look of confused alarm when a thick lock of her curls became ram rod straight with a single run through.

Once he had explained to her the differences between the greenwood brushes (medium curls), garnet brushes (heavy curls), armordor brushes (locked stiff) and black stem brushes (straight), she had taken one look at him and swept all of the brushes into a pouched she'd made out of her tank top and had left.

He found the "mohawk" style he next found her with especially inspiring.

 

Natasha steals his teas. But only once he's made them. The first time it happened, Bruce had looked up from where he'd set some soup to boil to find Natasha sipping carefully from the mug of avena sativa tea he'd set out to settle.

When she looked up at him, Bruce just raised an eyebrow at her. She stared back at him for a long moment before slowly reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a bag of Skittles. She carefully set it on the table and slid it half way towards him, as if in offering, before taking a step back.

Bruce stared at it for a moment before snorting and rolling his eyes. He took the bag and made himself a new cup of tea.

When it became a regular thing, the replacement of his tea with a bag of some sort of food, he started making two mugs of whatever he was drinking.  
Even then, she still took the mug he'd been drinking from, no matter how low it'd become.

At this point, he just tried not to think to deeply into it.

 

"Those are my shoes." 

Natasha glanced at Tony from where she sat at the kitchen island. Her feet were swinging, her legs crossed, decked out in a pair of glossy black platform dress shoes. She set her tablet down and let out an inquisitive hum at him.

"THOSE are MY shoes." he repeated.

"No they're not."

"My _name_  is engraved on the bottoms." he seethed.

She blinked and lifted up her foot to look at the bottom. Sure enough, in large bright red block letters was Tony's last name. "Huh. Would you look at that. Bit tacky, don't you think?" she said.

"That's not important because you're not going to be wearing them. Take them off." Tony huffed, crossing his arms.

"I like 'em. And they're mine, so...no." she said with a smile.

Tony threw his hands up in the air with a shout, fingers stuck in a half curled position. "Are you kid- No. This is not going to be a thing!" he barked, stalking over to her to yank his shoes (HIS shoes! His favorite fucking pair at that!) off her undeserving feet.

He was halfway to her when she sat up straighter, her eyes narrowing. Tony paused, his self perservation instincts kicking in against his will. He made to move a step closer anyway and her eyes narrowed to silts. He pulled his leg back.

"...I'm telling Pepper."

"You do that."

 

They'd just finished eating breakfast the day that it happened. Clint and Bruce were doing the dishes while Steve cleaned the table and Tony and Thor sat in a breakfast induced haze/bliss respectively. Natasha brought her plate over and deposited it in the dirty items sink.

"Oh, hey Nat? Mind if I borrow your bike for the day? The purple one. Transmissions being wonky, I kinda want to get the whole thing taken apart before the whole thing blows."

"Sure. Let me know when it's fixed." she said with a wave over her shoulder as she left the room. Clint nodded to himself as he went back to rinsing.

The other Avengers all just stared at him for a moment.

Tony lifted his head up from the table. "The purple bike's yours." he said slowly.

"No, it's not."

"Yes, it is."

"No, it's not."

"I MADE you that bike. _Yes, it is_!"

Steve moved in between them, blocking Tony's line of sight to Clint's back. "Clint. What's going on with that? Natasha's been...kind of stealing stuff from us lately? Could you at least just...something?"

Clint sighed softly and turned around, leaning against the sink as he dryed his hands off with a rag.

"You guys are her friends, right?" he said.

That got a couple of nods all around.

"HER friends, right? Not just A friend. Right?"

"Yes..." Steve said slowly, trying to figure out where Clint was going with this.

"Right. So personal pronouns and shit. Hers. You're her friends, which means you're HERS. So anything you own is hers too."

" _WHAT?!"_  Tony squawked.

"It really only applies to actual stuff. Usually random stuff. She doesn't take anything important. Because you need it and she respects that so you get to borrow it on a permanent basis."

Tony's head fell onto the table with a groan while Steve massaged his eyelids with a sigh. Bruce stared up at the ceiling for a moment before turning back to Clint. "Isn't she kind of friends with Fury and them?" he asked. "Does she actually..."

Tony's head shot up immediately, the utter delight on his face making it clear that he had every intention of hacking surveilence cameras in the near future.

"No," Clint said, dashing all of Tony's hopes and dreams like an asshole, "She's FURY'S friend. Same thing for Coulson and Pepper, basically people she's worked under and really respected. They can have unrestained access to anything she has but not the other way around. Usually."

"She worked for me." Tony protested.

"She worked for _Pepper_ , who worked on your behalf. Not the same thing."

"She took my _shoes_." he grumbled.

Steve blinked, looking irritatingly amused by that tidbit of information. He smirked as his eyes darted down and back up as if trying to see his feet through the island.  " _Really_?"

Onto to the table Tony's head fell once more, just as both middle fingers rose to the heavens.


	20. Bundled and Bold - Clint and the Avengers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So...yeah.

The thing was, the more time Steve spent in this not so Brand New World, the less weird he felt.

  
Not because there were more and more people like him (though that was certainly true) but because he lived with some incredibly weird people, even by his standards.

Steve let out a silent, wide mouthed yawn as he entered their personal gym's locker room. He stripped out of his jacket and opened up his locker to put it away and grab a change of clothes.

He just about had a heart attack. He hadn't even KNOWN it was possible for him to have heart attacks. Steve put a hand over his mouth and took a moment to calm his breathing before he woke anyone up.

  
Anyone, in this situation, being Clint who was curled up and sleeping soundly inside of Steve's locker.

Inside of his goddamn locker.

He considered waking the archer up but decided against it. His face looked surprisingly open and relaxed in a way that Steve rarely saw when the man was awake. So he pulled his workout clothes down from the top shelf as quietly as he could. Then he draped his leather jacket over the sleeping assassin before shutting the door quietly.

　

 

Clint was an Olympic Gold Medal Level Sleeper.

Or he would be if the committee ever decided that it was a legitimate sport.

In the meantime, it was just Clint's favorite hobby (archery isn't a hobby, it's Clint's life. Those are two seperate categories). While he did make an effort to sleep in his bed at night, he was just as often found in other random areas. Those areas were usually confined, high up, or both.

He spent a great deal of time sleeping in the vents at SHIELD, usually above Coulson's office but occasionally above Fury's office. Only when he was in a noticably good mood and thus could be trusted to not start shooting at the ceiling or walls randomly. I mean, sure, Fury always (usually) made sure to aim where he knew Clint wasn't but it was still a crappy ass way to wake up, okay?

It was just another one of those weird habits that one had to get used to when living in a tower with other superheroes.

　

 

Bruce had been in the kitchen for five minutes and half way through a glass of milk before he noticed that there was someone in the room with him.

  
Sleeping on top of the fridge.

He stared at the archer for a long, long moment before turning his attention down the glass of milk before him.

It's possible that there was actually a deadly assassin curled up like a cat on top of the fridge. It was also possible that this was a hallucination caused by lack of sleep. Or bad milk. Bruce frowned slightly and then just poured the glass of milk down the sink and left the kitchen, refusing to look back and check to see if Clint was actually still there.

　

 

"Sir, I would strongly advise against turning that on."

Tony pulled his goggles up off from over his eyes. He stared down at the car in front of him. It was actually more of a truck/robot thing (it was a work in progress). He had spent the last week and a half creating and then modifying it until he could find something better to do.

"Okay...Why not?"

"It would appear that..."

Tony frowned slightly, it was weird for Jarvis to pause like that. He resisted the urge to take a couple steps back in case the thing exploded. Or tried...to make out with him? Is that the kind of turning on he meant?

"...that Agent Barton is under the hood."

Tony turned his head to look up at the ceiling then turned back to the truck. "You're kidding right?"

"I'm afraid not, Sir."

"What is he doing  _inside_ my car?" he asked, squinting at the vehicle as if, if he stared hard enough, he'd be able to see an actual reason for it.

"He appears to be sleeping."

"In my car?"

"Yes."

" _On_ my engine?"

"Yes, Sir."

Tony massaged the his closed eyelids and then went over to the car. He propped the hood up and, sure enough, there was a grown man lying on his stomach, half curled up in the small space.

  
He was even lying on a blanket.

Clint's head tilted slightly at the introduction of light into his small space. "Hey." he mumbled sleepily.

"Is that comfortable?" Tony asked, because he was actually just as curious as he was weirded out.

" 'Little. 's warm." he replied.

"Was about to get a lot warmer. Maybe leave a note next time?" Tony said, sounding vaguely incredulous but mostly amused at this point.

" 'old Jarvis."

"Right. Well, have fun, I guess." Tony said, carefully lowering the hood back down.

　

 

Thor found Clint in his bathtub. He'd grabbed several of the god's clothes, as well as several of his pillows, and had made himself a surprisingly comfortable looking nest there. Thor had thankfully found this out before he had tried to start running the water, though after he had already stripped himself of his clothes.

Thor snorted softly, more fond than anything else as he watched the man.

Clint woke two hours later in his nest, but in a bed, with a giant god of thunder drapped over him. Which was interesting for several reasons, not the least of which being he was not nearly a light enough sleeper for...whatever _this_ was... to have been feasible without waking him up.

But... it was actually pretty comfortable, so he decided to just not look too deeply into it.

　

　

"I swear to God, it's like they're cats." Bruce murmured to himself.

Tony glanced over at him from where he had just sat down on the couch. "What?"

Bruce's eyebrows both rose and he opened his mouth before closing it again. "I...nothing. Are you sure you want to sit there?" he asked, moving to take his own seat on one of the recliners.

Tony rolled his eyes and spread out, both arms hooking over the back of the couch while his legs opened wider. "It's my couch. Why wouldn't I want to sit here?" he asked.

Bruce was about to answer him when suddenly Tony was jerking his legs up onto the seat with a sharp cry, curling up. Steve and Thor both startled in the doorway, nearly dropping six bowls of popcorn. " _WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?_ There's something under there!" he barked.

The chair vibrated a little and after a moment he could actually  _hear_ Clint's badly muffled laughter.

"You asshole! How did you even _fit_ \- I swear to God..."

"IT WAS NAT!" Clint called out, voice somewhat muffled by the confined space.

"I'm not sorry."

 


	21. Worthy - Steve and Bucky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was initially just the beginning of the last chapter (Bundled and Bold), but after I'd written it, this part seemed off. I didn't want to just delete it and it works well as a stand alone, so I'm putting it here.

Even before becoming Captain America, Steve knew he was considered...weird. He was the odd one out in most things really. If it wasn't his height, it was his health. If it wasn't his health, it was his personality. Weird wasn't all that great, but he'd never felt the need to change. Mostly because of Bucky.

 

Long past the point where they'd become inseparable friends, Bucky had slid to the ground next to him, trying to catch his breath after he'd stopped some assholes from trying to kill Steve because he'd tried to stop those same assholes from messing with the deli owner's little girl.

 

"Am I... Is this weird?" Steve had asked him with a wry smile and a darkening left eye, half doubled over. Even without putting words to it, Bucky knew the questions Steve was actually asking.

 

"This? Yeah. You? You're the best kind of weird, you know?" he said, reaching out and letting a hand fall on Steve's head. "There's a word for that, you know? It's " _exceptional."_ "

 

Steve snorted at that. "I'm exceptional?"

 

"Yeah. At least, I bet Mary Singer thinks so. Bet her dad would too." Bucky leaned back against the alley wall and closed his eyes with a soft sigh. "You make me want to be a better man, you know? Worthy of being your friend." he said softly.

Steve startled and stared at Bucky, who just continued to stare straight forward. Steve bit back a smile and used the wall to slowly push himself up. "Well, damn. I've been pulling shit like this all this time so I could be worthy of being YOUR friend." he said.

 

Bucky snorted. "Right. That mean you going to stop?" Bucky asked with both eyebrows raised.

 

"Probably not. Old habits and all that. Shoulda told me sooner." Steve replied, unable to stop the smirk growing on his face as he pushed off against the wall to stand properly. He turned to extend a hand to his friend.

 

Bucky let out a soft huff of laughter and took Steve's hand, getting up. "So it's my fault you're so damn stubborn now? _That's_ what you're going with?"

 

"You  _like_ stubborn." Steve said, grinning wide now despite his split lips.

 

"Punk."

 

"Jerk."

 

Bucky sighed. "...and damn straight, I like stubborn, but I don't like _dead_. So don't push it, sunshine." he half grumbled as they made their way out of the alley.

 

"Sure, sure, Old Man Barnes. Need me to walk you home? I don't see your walking stick."

 

Bucky froze where he was, just half a step behind Steve. Steve paused and looked back, frowning slightly at the odd expression on Bucky's face. He barely had the chance to say "Buck?" when he was suddenly being tackled around the middle and hefted into a fireman's carry in one smooth move.

 

"WOAH! _Shit_ , okay, sorry. Sorry. Let me down, Buck." he said, giving Bucky a couple irritated pats on the back.

 

"Just trying to help, is all, Mr. Rogers. I need you to watch my back. You got a good view back there?"

 

"Bucky, _no_." Steve started, but Bucky was already out of the alleyway and walking as down the street. He didn't even need to see the older teen's face to know the exact shade of cocky the grin on his face was. Steve sighed and closed his eyes, letting his hands hang down limply behind.

 

If Steve starting pinching and poking and writing symphonies with his nails along whatever he could reach back there, it had absolutely nothing to do with the way Bucky twitched and jumped at every action. Steve was just an innocent artist! Keeping his hands busy was a necessity.


	22. Forget me nots - Fury, Coulson and the Avengers

It said a great deal about how weird that day _already_ was that Tony Stark was the first (second, technically...sort of?) person to arrive to a meeting with SHIELD. Part of it, he'll admit, was due to the fact that he was still awake from yesterday (and the day before, but who's counting?). Part of it was due to the fact that Jarvis, as he would later find out, had reset all of the clocks in Tony's immediate areas (including his goddamn watches somehow) to read exactly 45 minutes late.

So where Tony was expecting to roll in a little too fashionably late, he found himself early.

Tony glanced around the room and frowned slightly at the sight of Phil Coulson in one of the chairs on the far side of the meeting table. He blinked slowly at that, but didn't put too much thought into it.

It wasn't the first time Tony's had a hallucination of someone that he knew to be dead. It wasn't even the first time that he's had a hallucination of Phil. It was just another point in a long list of issues that he kept to himself.

Tony walked around the desk to take a seat next to the agent. Phil was sitting up in his seat, using his left hand to read through and probably edit a report. Even in death, the guy kept himself busy.

Tony lay his head on the table and just _watched_  Phil for ten minutes. He picked up his chair and moved his seat so that it was right up next to Phil's. As per usual, Phil didn't even pause in his work, let alone look up, at the action, choosing to simply ignore Tony. The billionaire smiled and leaned closer so that their shoulders were touching, hooking his arm through Phil's casually, before taking out his own tablet and going through some old blueprints that he wanted to modify. He didn't particularly care how odd it looked on the outside, sometimes he just needed the pretend comfort.

Clint was the next person to arrive. He was clearly only half awake, because he managed to get halfway though the room before he paused.

"Stark?"

Tony let out a curious hum.

"...The fuck is that?"

Tony blinked and looked up at his teammate. He looked down at his tablet to make sure he hadn't stumbled onto anything weird or resembling porn in his hazy state before looking back up at Clint. Clint's eyes darted to the right of Tony and then back. Tony turned his head to glance at Phil, who was still ignoring him, and then back at Clint, who raised both eyebrows.

"Oh. You see him too? I kinda assumed he was a hallucination."

"Yeah, it's not. So..."

Tony turned back to Phil and stared at him for a moment. He reached out and pressed his finger into the man's cheek. For the first time, Phil paused briefly in his work. His blinked hard, eyes flicking skyward for a moment in a way that made both Clint and Tony grin, before returning to his work.

"Skin's a little cold. Life model decoy, maybe?" Tony offered.

Clint walked around the desk to where the two men were and moved to stand behind Phil. "You think SHIELD has the tech for that?" he asked, leaning down to fold his arms over the back of Phil's chair.

"You guys have been messing with alien tech for decades. I wouldn't put it pass them to have something like this too. Besides, I'm pretty sure Sitwell's getting ready to murder us so he doesn't have to deal with the PR guys anymore. Makes this seem legit, right?"

"Could be a clone." Natasha said from the doorway. She entered the room fully and took a seat at Phil's right. She pulled her chair closer, though not nearly as close as Tony had. She took Phil's right hand into her own and ran her fingers over his palm. "Definitely a clone. Skin's too well done for it to be a LMD." she said.

When Tony opened his mouth to protest that, because he sure as hell could be that thorough if he were making a new Phil, Clint shook his head. "No, Nat's right. Can you imagine the guys in R&D knowing Phil well enough to get his mannerisms right? This is definitely a clone." he said. He was resting his chin on the top of Phil's head at this point. Phil, on the other hand, seemed to be going out of his way to pointedly ignore ALL of them.

They couldn't blame him.

"...that we get to keep, right?" Tony asked, glancing between the two actual SHIELD agents.

"Damn straight we're keeping him." both assassins muttered like a vow.

Tony immediately opened up a new screen on his tablet and got to work.

  
When Thor came in next, he stared at the scene before him with his brow knit in mild confusion. "Were you not felled, Son of Coul?" he asked.

"He's a clone." Natasha supplied.

"Fury's tired of us running through handlers like condoms." Clint added.

For the second time that hour, Phil paused in his work. This time it was simply to reach up and flick Clint hard on the forehead before returning to his work like nothing had happened. Clint let out a choked laugh and buried his face in the hair at the back of Phil's head.

Thor paused for a moment, considering that, before he nodded. It seemed reasonable, in a SHIELD way, for the Director to take that course of action. He took a seat next to Natasha, who had taken to drawing on Phil's hand with a black pen.

Steve and Bruce were the next to enter the room, having just come from a meeting with Sitwell. It was just their bimonthly "Please control Stark. Seriously, bribe him with candy, with SEX, if you have to. I get more calls about him than about the HULK," meeting.

They paused at the doorway. Steve looked as if he was torn between concerned confusion and the urge to turn around and go home because he actually _was_ too old for this nonsense, at least this early in the day. Bruce just looked curious.

"Okay. So...what's going on with all this?" Bruce asked, making a vague hand waving motion.

"Fury has cloned the Son of Coul in the belief that he would manage us better than those currently found in that position." Thor said simply.

Both men raised their eyebrows.

"He CLONED Phil?" Steve said in disbelief.

Tony raised a hand, half in greeting and half to get their attention. "We're _assuming_  he's a clone. Could just as easily be an android." he said.

Clint groaned, " _Oh, come ON_. There is _NO WAY_ -"

"What the fuck is going on here?" a voice barked.

The team startled just a touch, all turning towards the doorway where Fury had managed to walk up behind Steve and Bruce.

"You cloned Phil, is what's going on." Steve said, his tone a touch cold.

"And we're keeping him. Already got his floor half ready." Tony added.

Fury stared at the group before him as if they were the biggest set of idiots he'd ever had the displeasure of meeting. His gaze slowly turned to Phil. "The fuck did you tell them?"

"Nothing. I've simply chosen not to help dig you out of this particular ditch." Phil said casually.

Fury's eye narrowed at him while Phil stared back impassively.

"He's not a clone." Fury finally said, without breaking eye contact with Phil.

" _I KNEW IT_! LM-fucking-D for the win!" Tony crowed, pointing happily at the sulking Clint.

Fury's eye twitched but didn't move. "He is NOT a LMD, Stark. That's the real one. Just too damn stubborn to stay dead."

The team stared at him in shock before turning to Phil. The was a brief period where Clint, Tony and Natasha half recoiled in alarm at the fact that they'd been openly CUDDLING Phil for the better part of an hour. Natasha's eyes went very wide, which was as close as she was ever going to get to blushing, while Clint's ears turned a little pink.

Tony stared at Phil, then at Fury, then at where his arm was hooked with Phil's. "...Oh, well fuck this. Too late to be embarrassed now." he said, scooting even closer. Natasha let out a soft huff of laughter before going back to playing with Phil's fingers, while Clint snorted and remained where he was.

Deciding that it was easier to just ignore that whole situation, Steve turned back to Fury. "It's been nine _months_ , Director. You couldn't have said something in that time?"

"And let you watch him die?"

Steve stilled, "What?"

"Over and over again, Rogers. I didn't want to tell you until I was _sure_  that he was going to make it _and_ that he was going to be okay. Or would you have preferred to be there... and _watch him_...be put back together again?"

Steve frowned at Fury, looking pained. Before he could even speak, Tony's voice rang out. "We would have wanted to be there to help him." he said, his voice almost quiet but full of certainty. "We would have protected him.We would have made him stronger."

"Or weaker." Fury corrected. "You couldn't push him even half as hard as he'd pushed himself." his gaze traveled over each Avenger. "And you wouldn't have let him even try." he said.

"He's right." Phil said before anyone could further protest, "It's what we agreed to. Though I _was not_ a part of the whole 'supposedly dead' scheme. And for that, I _am_ sorry."

The team watched him silently, the thick air of tension draining a touch at that admission.

"You are...coming to stay with us though, yes? Tony can have a space made for you easily." Natasha said carefully, her eyes searching.

Phil gave her a slight smile, squeezing lightly at the fingers in his hand. "No, I have my own place. I'll be fine." he said.

"Our place has medical equipment that you might need. Or a gym for PT." Clint offered.

"No."

"Look, we're not saying that you have to move in right now." Tony said, turning in his seat to face Phil fully. "We're just asking if, say, your apartment on 34th and Broadway happened to get smashed into during a fight with Dr. Doom or something, you would prefer beige or grey carpet? That's all."

Phil stared at the man with something surprisingly close to horror.

"Make it blue, like SHIELD blue. If you're adding beige in there, maybe use it for the walls? That's how he has his apartment." Clint said.

"I would buy a _new apartment_. I am not moving into yours." Phil told them very, very slowly.

"You...do not wish to live with us? Have we wronged you in some way, Son of Coul?" Thor asked softly.

Phil's head turned sharply to look at the Asgardian. He looked just...painfully said. And although Thor had used 'we,' the 'I' was painfully clear in his words. As were the implications of it. "No, that's not-" Behind Phil, Tony gave Steve a pointed look.

"Then what is it?" Steve interrupted carefully, picking up the cue. He moved to sit down at the table next to Tony and lent in closer. "As our handler, wouldn't it be easier to assemble for missions if you're nearby? And we've missed... Sir, you have no idea how much of an _honor_ it would be to have you with us." Steve said softly, eyes open wide and his voice filled with All American Earnestness.

Phil stared at him, looking vaguely trapped as his eyes went from Steve back to Thor. He turned to Fury. "SIR." he said, only barely disguising the plea in his tone.

"One, you went and got them all attached to you. That's YOUR problem, not mine. Two, do you really want to spend the next seven months, which is how long it'll be before you crack, by the way, debugging your house and cars and _clothes_ -"

"And food." Tony added.

Both Phil and Fury stared at Tony in mild alarm. "Nanobots. Ingested, attach to the blood vessels and measure bodily functions." Tony offered as an explanation.

Fury just turned back to Phil and raised both of his eyebrows.

Phil closed his eyes and resisted the urge to massage his eyelids. "Fine."

Fury smirked. "Good. I'd hate to have to move your shit back after I went to all that trouble."

 

It was times like this where Phil questioned his career choices. He could handle the dying, the torture, the mission reports. But it hand clearly shot his taste in friends straight to hell.


	23. Shaggy Dog Stories - Clint and the Avengers

Clint apparently has some major issues with dogs. It's not even the reasonable cringe and shift away that most people that are afraid of dogs use.

Clint actively avoids dogs.

Every other Monday Steve and Clint get burgers for everyone at a little bistro over on the east end of Brooklyn. The place doesn't deliver and they (re: Natasha) like eating there a little too much to bother trying to find someplace closer.

There are a lot of people with dogs in Brooklyn. So, watching Clint casually cross the street, or shift onto the grass, or move to stand on the other side of Steve...several times in the course of an hour...it's actually a little alarming. Steve had initially just assumed that Clint was doing it out of a sense of courtesy, but the archer turns his head away from the dogs each and every time, his expression carefully set into something like indifference. And, each and every time, Steve can hear Clint's heart rate pick up sharply and then forcibly level out, as if regaining control of itself.

Steve makes a mental note of that, though he can't bring himself to question it out loud. He does shift them out of the way, able to hear and smell the dogs coming much sooner than Clint can, when he knows they're coming though.

It doesn't affect his job negatively at least. If, in the course of a mission, a dog needs to be saved, Clint is an utter professional. He will dash in, scoop the dog up and, once he gets it to a place of guaranteed safety (more or less, the city is being attacked, after all), he sets it down and is off running. It's all very clinical.

Tony is more weirded out by the whole thing than Steve is. Not because he's particularly more attached to animals (he isn't. God, no, the mess alone) but because he can't help but feel that Clint should be...more accustomed to animals, with the circus background and all.

Because Clint completely denies being even remotely afraid of dogs, Tony asks Natasha about it.

She just raises an eyebrow at him, her lips tipping downward. "Clint's not afraid of dogs. What are you even saying?" She says, not even bothering to give Tony a chance to show her evidence.

Neither Clint or Natasha ever bother to discuss the issue. It's actually two full years before anyone even finds out the truth.

If Clint ever sees, hears, or has prolonged contact with a dog...chances are it's going home with him.

Or he's going home with it. Clint's not picky.


	24. Dog Days In - Clint and Natasha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a continuation of the last chapter, as requested by crazy-strolling-by on tumblr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh...let me make a note of saying that no bestiality happened here.

Clint inwardly cringed and took a moment to settle himself before he opened his eyes. Natasha was standing there, barely illuminated by the moonlight that filtered in from the window of his...temporary residence. Seeing him awake, her eyes narrowed to slits.

"The _fuck_ , Clint?" she mouthed at him.

Clint sat up slowly, careful not to jostle his bed mate. He held up both hands placatingly. "Nat. _Nat_. In my defense, it's a _lundehund_. Look at him, look at him!" Clint stopped mouthing excitedly at her just long enough to turn a bit and wave his hands at the dog sprawled out on the bed beside him. He had a thick light brown coat with full white belly and a streak of white that ran along his head between his eyes. The coat was almost silky to the touch, no doubt from careful maintenence and a good diet. His tail twitched slightly in sleep, lifting up to flop down against the mattress as he let out a little huff of a breath.

If Clint had a tail, he'd probably be wagging it too.

Natasha glared at her idiot of a teammate. "Did you _break into these people's home_ in order to sleep with their dog?" she mouthed when he turned back to her.

Clint frowned at her, deeply affronted. "Of _course_ not. They invited me in."

Natasha resisted the urge to massage her eyelids. "Okay, you know what? We're not doing this here. Come on."

Clint's eyes went wide and pained like she'd told him that they were going to torch the place and let them all burn. Natasha's eyes narrowed again. "So help me, Barton, I will _castrate_ you." she threatened silently.

Clint stared at he for a moment, as if gouging the validity of that threat. Then, finding it very much valid, he let out a silent sigh, his whole body slumping with it. Clint reached back to the dog and his hand hovered over the dog's soft... luscious...just brushed fur before it curled into a fist. The archer steeled himself and stood up, nodding to his partner before he made his way over the window and exited without looking back.

She was hoping that he'd be a little less...forlorn by the time they'd made the trek to where she'd parked her car, not five minutes away. No such luck. She sighed. "How'd you even get them to let you hang out with their dog? Did you blow the dad?" she asked dryly.

Clint rolled his eyes but didn't let out the lovesick sigh that was threatening to slip out. "NO. ...though I would have, I mean, did you _see_ Roland's little ears? Fuck, I would've -- Anyways, no. I saved the little girl and her buddies from some freak that was trying to pick them up. I...may have mentioned that I was working on a mission in the area and needed to stay close. ...and that I got really cold at night..." he said, trailing off sheepishly.

Natasha let out low sound in the back of her throat. "You want me to tell Stark what you went AWOL for?" she asked as she speed through a clearly red light.

Natasha didn't even have to look at Clint to tell just how sharply he'd blanched at those words. "Then don't pull this shit again. It took me three hours to find you, you ass. We have GPS in our phones for a fucking reason." she growled, her words roughly somewhat from worry, though mostly from irritation.

Clint sat in silence for a long moment before letting his head fall to rest on her shoulder for a moment as she drove. "Sorry." he murmured. "Your hair's softer than any dogs fur."

Natasha stilled, though she kept her eyes on the road. "Is that supposed to be a complement?"

Clint opened his mouth then froze for four long seconds. "I....can I take that back?"

"You can buy me truffles." she offered.

"I will buy you all the truffles." he swore. "I've still got like, three cards, Tony hasn't noticed are gone."

"Atta boy."


	25. Not As Old As You'd Think - The Avengers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for QueenOfTheQuill, who requested Steve hiding!

It's actually Bucky that starts it. Well, Bucky and Disney, which is as alarming a combination as any.

None of the Avengers could claim to have had anything resembling a "normal" childhood, though Steve and Bucky's came closest to it. Short lived as they were, the moments that they'd spent playing outside and roughhousing couldn't be traded for anything in the world.

While it was incredibly rare for Steve to sleep in, cold weather made him tired in a way he was fairly certain had nothing to do with the serum. So that Sunday morning found Steve bundled up in bed and curled around one of his pillows. He wasn't entirely asleep, simply drifting in and out lazily.

That is, until a soft tap at his window startled him awake. Well, not so much the tap itself but the fact that Steve's room was on the sixty-first floor.

He also lacked a balcony.

Alert, but a touch pissed at having to leave the warmth of his blankets, Steve made his way to the window carefully. Even in haste, he still thought to grab his shield along the way. Steve pulled the curtain back slowly, expecting the worst. So he was more than a little surprised to see Bucky standing outside his window, his metal hand acting as hook to keep him in place. He was at least dressed warmly, a thick purple jacket keeping him from freezing his ass off in the negative degree weather.

They stared at each other in silence for a moment before Bucky broke it, unhooking the metal hand and folding both arms casually on the windowsill. "Do you want to build a snowman?" he asked.

Steve's eyes widened, his gaze flicking from Bucky's eyes, down his frame and back again. He grinned widely and dashed back into the room. He quickly tossed on a pair of thermal pants and a jacket. He grabbed one of the thin inner blankets from his bed and made his way back to the window, opening it up wider.

Bucky watched with amusement and then growing confusion as Steve climbed up onto the windowsill. Realization dawned on his face. "DO NOT," he started, but it was too late. Steve grabbed Bucky around the waist and jumped. Bucky didn't even have enough time to grab hold of the wall again, the metal just brushing against it before falling away. "ROGERS, YOU STUPID-ASS BASTARD!!"

  
  


Clint startled at the shout. He was outside on his floor, fortunate enough to actually have a balcony. He peered over the edge and was only vaguely alarmed to see a...parachute, sort of, open up before there was an explosion of snow in the garden area that made up the back of their building.

Clint leaned against the edge and watched as what was clearly going to be a brawl started. At least it began as a brawl. Bucky managed to use his feet to throw Steve several yards away. He used the delay to dash behind a bench and use his metal arm for what it was obviously made for, a snowball pinwheel.

Clint pulled out his cell phone, recorded a couple seconds and sent it to Natasha. "You seeing this?" he texted before returning his attention to the snowball fight. It wasn't long before he felt Natasha sidle up next to him to watch the goings on in fascination. In the time it took for Natasha to get there and get herself comfortable (she had brought hot chocolate and popcorn), it seemed that they had reached a stalemate. Bucky had turned the bench on its side for shelter and Steve was hiding behind a tree. They had reached a truce and were using the time to stock up on snowballs.

Which was boring as hell.

Natasha knelt down and began rolling snow into a ball. "Aww, Nat, no," Clint said, both amused and horrified. She looked up at him and waggled her eyebrows, earning a snort.

"You think you can make them think the other sent it?"

Clint grinned, unable to help the evil growing within him, "Obviously."

 

  
Bucky's head shot up and he cursed low, "That little punk." He grabbed three snowballs and threw them at once, getting the arm that was visible from around the tree.

Steve startled and immediately returned fire. "JERK! I thought we called a truce!" he shouted in between throws.

"YOU were the one that broke it!"

"No, I didn't! YOU broke it, asshole!"

"No, you did!"

"No, you--" Steve suddenly froze. He managed to turn his head just in time to see two heads drop down behind a balcony. Steve's eyes narrowed. He kept one eye on the balcony and extended one hand out, showing Bucky his palm. He waited a moment for Bucky to recognize the signal and pause. He leaned around the tree and made a circle with his hand and put it over one eye, as if to look through a pair of binoculars. Then he pointed towards the building, signaling six and then seven.

Bucky's eyes widened and then narrowed and he nodded.

Natasha and Clint sat on the floor of his balcony, their backs to it. "You think they saw us?" Clint whispered. She didn't answer him. After a moment, the shouting picked up again and both sighed in relief. That is, until cold wet snow landed on them from out of nowhere. Both assassins cried out in alarm and looked up over the balcony.

The crotchety old men had climbed up onto on of the taller trees. Bucky was throwing snowballs at them manually while Steve was using his shield to catapult huge (really seriously huge, why Steve) snowballs at them.

Clint cursed loudly, ducking for cover under a table. "JARVIS! Override Code B72496! We're under attack! Get Tony! Get Bruce! Get Thor!" he barked.

 

Things...sort of escalated after that.

 

Tony, when called to participate in anything, always goes all out. It took an alarmingly short amount of time for him to repurpose an old rocket launcher to work with snowballs. Thor, of course, decided it wise to use his god-like powers to increase the amount of snowfall over the ground, both aiding and hindering their cause.

Then Bruce, who hadn't really intended to get caught up in this nonsense to begin with, found himself with a handful of snow down the back of his pants courtesy of Tony and had promptly hulked out. And had immediately taken them all on with snowballs the size of small cars.

So _he_ won.

But, overall, the occasion had been...fun. They had felt young and playful and happy. So when Clint had suggested playing games together every now and again, no one had protested.

But that, as with all thing that they did, ending up done in extremes.

  
  
  


Sam's head shot up in alarm when two sharp beeps sounded throughout the building. It was followed by a clinical "The Storm is in pursuit," advisory from JARVIS and a countdown from 100. Steve and Bucky both sprung from their seats, Steve taking the time to pull Sam along behind him.

"What the heck is going on?" Sam hissed, though he didn't hesitate to follow the two super soldiers.

"Hide and seek, Thor's it," Steve said. He peeked around a corner in the hallway and then made a run for the stairwell. Bucky took off in another direction. Sam glanced in Bucky's direction before he chose to follow Steve.

"Right, okay. Let's pretend that makes sense in relation to what we're doing now," Sam said as he jogged down four flights of stairs, keeping his voice just low enough to be heard, "Where are we going then?"

"Main floor. All players have to be on the main floor. It'd take too long to find us all otherwise."

Sam squinted at Steve's back and then shrugged. "Okay, what the hell? Why not."

They nearly bumped into Tony who was on his way up from a lower lever. The engineer gave them a manic grin and a nod before pushing his way through the doorway before them and taking off. Steve rolled his eyes at that and took Sam's hand, leading him towards the kitchen. "Find a spot," he said.

Sam looked around and frowned deeply. There were a lot of cabinets, sure, but they all had shelves, making them far too small. "Uh _huh_. Dude, how young do you think I am that I could possibly--" Sam froze mid sentence, having made the mistake of turning around just in time to see that the man had managed to squeeze himself into the small cabinet under the sink by lying on his back and curling his legs up around the piping and over his head. He hadn't even bothered to empty the space of all the bottles and cleaning supplies, leaving even less room for his large frame.

Sam was man enough to admit that his brain shorted out a bit at that.

"Hurry up!" Steve whispered, managing to maneuver himself enough to pull the cabinet door shut and how was that even possible?

It should have been obvious before, but this was the point where Sam realized that he was friends with actual wraiths and other mystical beings masquerading as humans.

There was no other explanation.

Realizing that the countdown had already reached twenty, Sam shook his head and rolled his eyes. He spun on his heel and opened up one of the larger cabinets. Good enough. He pulled boxes upon boxes of breakfast foods and sweets (Poptarts, sugary cereals, cookies, and...bags of marshmallows? What, are they five?) into his arms and shoved them into the next cabinet over. He climbed up into it and pulled the door closed as quickly as he could.

 

  
Although Sam was found within ten minutes, it took nearly forty for Thor to find Steve even with his enhanced senses. Sam was kind enough not to rat him out and the looks on the faces of the other Avengers after time had been called told Sam that, yes, even by the standards of ghosts and gods, Steve Rogers was still weird as hell.


	26. When You Wish Upon a Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I don't know sometimes...

James Buchanan Barnes was an honest to fucking God Disney Princess.

  
As much as Tony wanted to find that hilarious, he's actually mostly freaking alarmed.

Tony had only come up to the main floor because he was running low on coffee grounds and his Rogers-senses were telling him that there was sweets to be found nearby (leftover home made cinnamon buns, thank goodness) and he felt the urge to drown himself in its glory.

So, while he waited for the pastries to warm up in the microwave, Tony found his gaze shifting around, trying to find a distraction. Which he found in Bucky.

The assassin turned sort of Avenger/friend was outside, seated on the floor with his legs crossed as he maintained one of at least seven guns of various sizes.

While that was certainly...odd, Tony DID live with Natasha and Clint so it didn't even occur to him to find that out of place. What was out of place was the group of animals that had settled themselves around the man.

There were seven different birds, one of which being an actual fucking eagle, in little clusters around him. A pigeon was hopping around, handing Bucky cleaning equipment as needed while a pair of squirrels moved the smaller guns out of Bucky's way once he was done with it. There were a couple rats that were scurrying around, pushing leaves that hand been blown onto the balcony through there railing.

And, lest he forget, there was a fucking kitten sleeping on the man's head.

It took a couple minutes for Tony to find his voice. His pastries were not only already cold but also forgotten.

"...Barnes," Tony said. When Bucky glanced up at him, Tony let both of his eyebrows rise as high as they would go. "The FUCK?" he asked.

Bucky's eyes dipped briefly before he made eye contact again. "...I don't know. They won't...leave me alone, so..."

Tony stared at Bucky, then at the animals (all but the kitten watching him as if they DARED him to come closer) and let out a sigh, massaging his eyebrows. He left the room without even bothering to take what he'd come for.

He was too old for this.

Tony did manage to comfort himself with the thought that it must have something to do with the serum. Because that was a reasonable, rational explanation. The fact that animals didn't seem to have the same reaction to Steve or Bruce meant nothing.

NOTHING, okay? It just meant that Tony was just never around for when they did it!

 


	27. Spider Sense - Bucky and Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone mentioned this on Tumblr once (can't remember who, but it was great) and I had to write something for it.

The sensation is almost strong enough to be considered intense. That in itself is enough to nearly enough to give the Soldier pause. It can not remember ever having experienced a sensation or emotion, let alone one as strong as this.

Odder still, it isn't even just  _one_ emotion. The Soldier can understand sudden waves of anger, it has seen it on the faces of its handlers often enough that, even after being wiped, the knowledge of consequences remains instilled within it. But with the surge of anger that the Soldier feels come fear - a fear so strong, it is better called dread. With it comes exasperation and irritation and, at the deepest, deepest parts of its being...something warm and bubbling that should be unpleasant but isn't. As a whole, the sensation drums up an urge to move, to do _something_ , though what that something is the Solder can't think of.

The first time it happens is hours after the Soldier has woken up. It is in the middle of the night and the Soldier is being briefed on a mission it will undertake in a days time. The Soldier is grateful for its silence as a requirement because it means that its handlers do not notice the way its breath catches. The Soldier briefly considers notifying its handlers, to alert them to some malfuction in its form. Then it realizes that the Soldier is not meant to "suffer from malfunction." Beaten or broken, the Soldier continues on and continues well without faltering.

The Soldier can't admit, even to itself, that the sensation is... familiar and that it finds a level of comfort in that.

The next time it occurs is in the middle of the day, mere hours after it has managed to complete its objective of deleting Nicholas J Fury. The Soldier clenches its fist and sucks in a deep breath, irritation flaring. The Soldier has little time to dwell on this (not that it would) before it is sent to eliminate Captain America.

At which point, the sensation becomes nigh constant.

Months later, as the Soldier slowly becomes Bucky, that sensation still comes at times. It is still seemingly random, clearly not influenced by anything that Bucky himself does. He comes to the realization that after decades of brainwashing, decades of torture... he's simply just that broken.

That is, until he decides to join Steve and Sam and Natasha clear out one of the many leftover Hydra nests. He and Natasha are crouched in some bushes, hanging back while Steve and Sam are going to be coming up from overhead to act as the first wave of attack.

Bucky watches from below as the two come up just overhead. He sees but doesn't hear Steve tell Sam something. Sam seems to argue over it but quickly acquieses to whatever Steve had asked for.

And then he drops him.

From nearly a mile up in the air.

That sensation hits him again and Bucky nearly jumps up from the desire to reach out and catch him or slow him or _something, anything_. There is a moment's breath where clairity starts to fill him before the realization actually hits like a sack of bricks. Immediately after comes the memory of the sheer NUMBER of times that Bucky's felt this sensation since he had woken up that first time in this decade. ...Bucky really kind of can't breathe.

_"Rogers, you stupid, reckless, DUMBASS little SHIT."_

 

 


	28. Didn't Quite Think This One Through - Steve, Natasha and Sam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait on this! Lost a fight with the flu. Hoping to get back into the groove of things soon!
> 
> Please feel free to leave me more prompts!

In all honestly, Sam had initially assumed that Steve and Natasha were dating. They worked close and well together and seemed to, quite frankly, have the whole ‘sexual tension’ thing going on. Steve was nothing short of protective of her and each smile she gave him was warmer or more pleased than the ones she wore in their everyday life.

 

Upon spending a little more time with the two of them, he decided to amend their interactions to ‘unresolved sexual tension.’ They apparently  _weren't_  dating and seemed unable or unwilling to get their act together for the time being. Because the fact that they weren't dating didn't change how close they walked together or how often and casually they touched each other.

 

Upon moving in with the former SHIELD agents (or having them move in with _him_ until they both moved in with Tony), he came to finally understand the nature of their relationship.

 

They were siblings. Alarmingly horrible and lovely by turns, granted, but siblings nonetheless.

 

They’d be easier to deal with if they were dating. But Sam loves his crazy organization-destroying buddies so he makes the trek from his new apartment in Manhattan to the Tower to see them every now and again.

 

Sam had gotten off on Natasha’s floor and was halfway down the hallway when Steve came power-walking around the corner ahead.

 

Power-walking suspiciously fast.

 

Steve startled when he noticed Sam, probably not noticing him due to the whole looking over his shoulder thing he had going on. He gave Sam a wide smile and hooked their arms together, turning Sam around in the process, and kept going without bothering to slow down. Sam squinted at the man.

 

“What’s going on, man?” he asked carefully.

 

Steve blinked down at Sam innocently (which, NO. Nice try, Rogers) and shrugged. “Not much, just thought I’d go for a walk. Maybe catch a movie if you’re up for it?” he offered.

 

Sam gave him an unimpressed looked. “…uh _huh_. What did you do, Rogers?”

 

“Nothing! Why would you even–”

 

Steve’s protests were cut off by an enraged roar that, were it not a couple octaves too high, Sam was pretty sure he would have mistaken for the Hulk. Both men jerked to a halt and looked back down towards the empty hallway with horror.

 

**“I am going to skin you ALIVE, Rogers!”**

 

Before Sam could even _decide_ what he should do about _that_ , he found himself being lifted up fully into a bridal carry. He clutched at Steve’s shoulders more from surprise than anything else, especially once Steve went and broke into a full on sprint.

 

“Steve! The hell, man? Are we going to die? Because I did NOT remember to write up a fucking _will_ before coming here,” Sam hissed.

 

“What, No! No...Maybe…” Steve hedged. He skid to a halt in front of the elevator. “Jarvis! Elevators!”

 

“I’m afraid Agent Romanov has initiated the override protocols for the elevators,” the AI replied, sounding vaguely apologetic.

 

“O _kay_ …okay. Where’s Phil? Or Pepper?” Steve asked, sounding panicked.

 

“Agent Coulson is away on business but Miss Potts is with Sir on the main R&D floor.”

 

“Thanks, Jarvis!” Steve kicked down the door of the stairwell, hesitated for a moment and began dashing up. By the time they had managed to make it up to the correct floor, they could hear the sound of the door to Natasha’s door slam against the door aggressively.

 

Steve skid to a halt inside the lab, the glass door opened automatically by a helpful Jarvis before it became a casualty. Tony and Pepper looked up from a set a blueprints and raised their eyebrows at them.

 

“Steve. Sam,” Pepper greeted with polite confusion.

 

“I may have put dye in Natasha’s pipes. She’s going to kill me. Help?” Steve asked meekly.

 

Pepper just blinked hard at him as if she were tempted to leave him to his fate. Tony snorted softly. “Jarvis, Hulkbuster, please and thanks,” he called out.

 

A large heavyset armor rose up from the floor towards the back of the room and opened up. When Steve stared at it in confusion (because it was nice but maybe a _little_ overkill?), Tony rolled his eyes and jerked his head towards it. Steve brightened in realization and beamed at the engineer. He set Sam down and dashed into the armor, sliding into it just seconds before Natasha came into view and then surged into the room.

 

“ _Holy,”_ The group murmured. The half wet and now pale green assassin glared bloody murder at them.

 

 **“Where is he? ROGERS! When I find you we’ll SEE how fucking super your bones are!”** she managed to yell with a growl, eyes darting around in search of the soon-to-be-late Captain America.

 

“ _Wow_ , your eyes,” Sam murmured. When her head turned sharply to stare at him he startled, immediately kicking his brain-to-mouth filter for not working properly. Her eyes narrowed at him slowly and Sam raised his hands, placating. “Sorry, just. Your skin makes them look really bright. It’s kinda nice,” he added with a shrug.

 

Her shoulders fell and her eyebrows knitted together, confused enough by the change in subject to forget some of her anger. Natasha stared at him for a moment longer, eyes searching. When she found no trickery, intent or even amusement in his expression, she blinked several times rapidly in what seemed like a brief flash of surprise and bashfulness. She rolled her lips with a sigh.

 

“…thank you. Tell Rogers to watch his back,” she said before spinning on her heels and leaving the room much more calmly then how she’d entered it.

 

The group let out a collect sigh of relief. The helmet of the Hulkbuster armor opened up with a soft hiss. Steve stared after Natasha for a moment before turning to Sam.

 

“Hey, do you think I could…you know, come stay with you for a bit?” he asked sheepishly.

 

“She knows where I live and I've kinda gotten used to not living in fear, so, no.”

 


	29. Everyone Please Stop Talking - Phil, Natasha and Clint

It was Barton’s fault, really. He could be silent, dead silent, for hours on end, still and focused like the bird of prey he was named after. But when things were calm, when that deadly focus wasn’t entirely needed, Barton just could not keep his mouth shut. If it wasn’t the jokes, it was the (really bad, dead God, Clint, _why)_ puns. If it wasn’t the puns, then it was some form of running commentary on their mission.

 

Phil allowed it because, contrary to popular belief, Hawkeye _did_ know when to maintain radio silence and would fall into it immediately without needing to be ordered. And, though Phil refused to admit it aloud, even to Nick, he did find it to be amusing. If painfully so at times.

 

He didn’t think about how things might change once Romanoff defected to SHIELD and Phil became her handler as well as Barton’s. It was, unfortunately, several months into their newfound partnership that Phil realized just how much the partnership had come to affect her.

 

How deeply Clint had corrupted her.

 

It started in the middle of a low danger infiltration mission. Phil was acting as the concierge at an upscale hotel. The target entered from the south entrance and Phil let out the soft single-toned hum that alerted his team to the target’s presence.

 

Phil introduced himself to the target and set about making small talk in an attempt to gleam as much information as he could from the man.

 

“Yeah, the weather’s been keeping us quite busy here,” Phil replied in response to the man’s grumbling about the heavy rain. “I’ll admit, I’m a bit rushed off my feet.”

 

“Hi, A Bit Rushed Off My Feet! I’m Natasha!”

 

Phil was infinitely grateful for the fact that the target had turned his head down to rummage for his wallet and had missed Phil’s full faced twitch. His team, apparently made up of honest to God five year olds, dissolved into laughter.

 

 

Because Phil was Phil, and fuck them if they thought they were going to make him laugh on the job, he managed to pull himself together in time to have his friendly smile back on by the time the target looked up.

 

Because Phil was Phil, he didn’t make good on his threat he made during his bathroom break to gag them both in the boiler room and leave them to rot after having to suffer through a near constant barrage of jokes from the two.

 

Because Phil was Phil, he didn’t give himself a concussion silently banging his head against the wall of the stall he was in, secretly grateful that no one could see him.

 

And, because Phil was Phil, he somehow still foolishly came to adore Natasha even after he realized that this would not come to be a one-time thing and that the deadly female world class Russian assassin that they had recruited was actually a Caucasian, middle-aged, suburban dad of 2.5 kids.


	30. Clint and Natasha - Are you seriously going to wear that?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Have you seen Clint’s old Hawkeye uniform in the comics? Because you need to.)
> 
> For gollybabes prompt: Clintasha - “are you seriously going to wear that??”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next couple of chapters are gonna be pretty short as these are all ficlet prompts.

 

“Are you seriously going to wear that?”

Clint raised an eyebrow, jerking his head to look over his shoulder at where Natasha had curled herself up on his bed. He offered her a wide grin. “Come _on_ , you have to admit that I look fantastic,” he replied cheekily.

Natasha squinted at him in silence for a long moment. “I… think I mis-learned the meaning of that word,” she said, intentionally allowing a bit of her Russian accent to leak through.

Clint let out a huff that wasn’t filled with nearly as much annoyance as he wanted. He was dressed in a very lovely, very purple uniform that he’d just spent the last two weeks making and remaking and perfecting by hand.

And it made his ass look  _amazing_.

So he told her as much, doing a couple flips and spins to make the flaps of the top move  _just so_  to give her the best view of his assets.

When he finally turned back to face her, she looked up from where she’d been _quite noticeably_  looking down.

“…Okay. I’ll admit that that was a reasonable  _rebuttal_.”

“ _Oh my god._  And people say  _I’m_  weird?”


	31. Steve and Natasha - Checking up after a mission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For patchesgryphon
> 
> Platonic Steve and Nat? Maybe just checking up on each other after a battle or mission.

Steve had a great poker face for someone that was bleeding out of their side.

“I’m fine.  _Really._  It’ll heal quickly,” he assured as the nurse at his side stitched him back together, all the while muttering to herself about crazy superheroes and their crazy injuries.

Steve decided not to be offended.

Natasha, perched on the end of Steve’s bed and painting his toenails bright blue because she could (it’s not like he could even bend over enough to stop her), snorted. “So, just to recap: Clint sprains his ankle, he’s benched for a week and not allowed to so much as touch the floor let alone walk on it. Tony gets the flu, he’s under quarantine with three HHAs, a gallon of chicken soup and a mountain of pillows. But you get  _stabbed with a spear laced with acid_ and that’s just a scratch. Just gonna walk it off, nothing to see here?” How she managed to stare at him with a raised eyebrow the entire time while still painting his nails, Steve didn’t know.

Steve offered her a sheepish smile. “To be fair, I’m sturdy.”

She hummed in response to that, looking back down at her work. “Uh huh. Well, Bruce advised at least three days bed rest, even for someone as  _sturdy_ as you.”

“Nat-”

Her head turned back up to look at him as she smiled. “It’s cute that you think you need to be conscious the whole time.”

Steve blinked back at her with wide eyes. A vaguely nervous laugh spilled from his lips. “You wouldn’t,” he said, clearly only pretending to be sure.

“Again,  _so cute._  Maybe have a chat with Clint before you say that again.”

Steve sat up straighter, increasingly wary. “The doctors wouldn’t let you?” he offered.

“I’m sure they would enjoy not having to redo your stitches.”

“…I’ll tell Sam?”

Natasha snorted at what was clearly a last ditch effort. “So you’ll say ‘Sam! Natasha threatened to drug me if I tried to go out on missions with an acid spear stab wound!’ and he’ll say…”

Steve sighed and looked away, “’Uh  _huh_ , and why are you even getting out of bed with a stab wound, Steve?’” he admitted, slinking down into a slouch. His nurse gave him a sharp poke in the side (she was working here, Rogers), forcing him to sit up straight again.

Natasha capped the blue polish and opened up the clear coat polish, leaning down to blow at his toes for a moment. Steve shivered, his toes curling slightly. “So, how many days of bed rest are we getting?” she asked, leading.

“…three.”

“Four? Great idea!”

“Nat…”

“ _Great idea, Steve_.”

Steve closed his eyes and thumped the back of his head against the headboard. “Thanks Natasha, so glad I thought of it,” he grumbled.


	32. Steve and Tony - Starting Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Steve and Tony (sort of) became friends.
> 
> (This was one of three prompts that I filled in the hopes of becoming a writer for a specific blog. I figured it wouldn't hurt to post them here too so as not to just get rid of them.)

In all honesty, Steve couldn’t tell if their budding friendship started off subtly or so unsubtly that it circled back into being subtle.

 

After the Incident, he’d refused the offer to move into the Stark Tower. He knew an olive branch when he saw one but at the same time, he’d brought enough of his own nightmares with him to the future to add to that by sleeping in a building still undergoing reconstruction from an alien invasion, thanks.

 

Tony had taken his refusal in stride and they’d even shaken hands as they parted ways. That should have been the end of it.

 

In fact, Steve could be forgiven for thinking that it _had_  been the end of it. He’d moved to an apartment building within an hour’s walk of his old neighborhood (just far away to not be startled every time he went out by something that was familiar but changed just enough to be off putting).

 

And it was nice. He joined an art class that had just started up. He got a great deal on an apartment with an open floor plan that had an amazing view and even better lighting. He became a regular at a diner that made the fluffiest freaking pancakes that he’d ever had the pleasure of considering proposing to.

 

He thought he’d been lucky. Right up until one day, as he left his apartment, he looked up just in time to see a street camera suddenly swerve to face away from him. And it was _meandering_ , steadfastly refusing to turn back in his direction even though the only thing it was currently facing was a brick wall.

 

Steve bit back a smirk and rolled his eyes.

 

Though he did start stopping by the Tower for breakfast every now and again.

 

 


	33. Steve and the Avengers - Building memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (This was number two of three prompts that I filled in the hopes of becoming a writer for a specific blog. I figured it wouldn't hurt to post them here too so as not to just get rid of them.)

It’s actually Pepper's idea to make a memory notebook. She doesn’t have the actual time to scrapbook but there’s a cabinet in her garage filled with mementos. The oldest memories, an old teddy bear, a small locket, are at the bottom with the newer memories - a bag of glass, a pass to the Stark Expo - closer to the top.

 

“Sometimes it’s nice to look back,” she’d told him.

 

Steve doesn’t have STUFF. Not from back then. Or even from right now. But he’s got a great memory. So he remembers. He starts from the first thing he can remember and draws that. It’s just his mother’s hands, half visible where they’d been, pulling a thick wool cap down over his head. He just works his way up from there. He draws Bucky. He draws the Commandos and Howard and Peggy. He draws his current teammates and colleagues.  

 

He’s curled up against the window one day, on the massive excuse for a windowsill that Tony’d installed in all of the upper floors (Bruce being the only Avenger that isn’t part cat), flipping through his sketchbook. It’s only when he’s halfway through what he’s drawn so far that he realizes just how many drawings he has of the Avengers.

 

And they’re striking.

 

The older memories are soft edged and wistful. The newer ones… they’re all sharp edges and excitement. Many of them are in color, detailed down to the subtle shades of blond in Clint’s hair, and filled with a level of detail that he hadn’t consciously realized that he’d noticed in his team.

 

He runs a finger lightly over the bright crimson of Tony’s armor, detailed to the point of seeming photographic, and smiles.

 

He’s never going to forget having known these people. No matter how long he lives.

 

 


	34. Steve and Nick (and everyone else) - Triple dog dare you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (This was the third of three prompts that I filled in the hopes of becoming a writer for a specific blog. I figured it wouldn't hurt to post them here too so as not to just get rid of them.)

“Am I the only one that fully expected this to happen?”

 

Natasha lolled her head to her left to glance at Clint. Like the rest of them, he was wearing a pair of standard handcuffs around his wrists. It was a formality, really. Even the cops had seemed sheepish when they’d put it on them.

 

“You expected us to get arrested?” she asked, half amused but mostly curious.

 

“We stole a baseball team. Sorry, we _kidnapped_ the New York Yankees.”

 

“Borrowed,” Steve corrected. His lips quirked up and evened out quickly as if he were forcing himself to keep from smiling outright. “They just didn’t know they were being borrowed. Besides, it’s not kidnapping if we don’t move them from one place to another.”

 

“Sure. Have fun explaining that to _Pepper_ ,” Tony grumbled, shifting to bring his legs up onto the bench and rest them across Bruce’s lap. “You said you talked it over with their guys!”

 

“I _said_ that I talked it over with _some_ guys and that the Yankees would be happy to play a game with the Avengers,” he replied, eyes wide and voice deceptively innocent.

 

Tony narrowed his eyes and stared at Steve for a long moment. “ _Why_ ,” he finally asked, the word drawn out and careful.

 

Before Steve could manage an answer, the cell’s door was sliding open. Two police officers along with Fury were standing at the other side of it. The officers were quick to make their leave once the cell was opened. Steve was the first to rise after that and make his way to the door.

 

The blond grinned widely and held up his hands palms up as he shrugged when Fury raised an eyebrow at him. After a pause, Fury snorted.

 

“You crazy little shit. And here I thought Carter was _exaggerating_.”

 

 


	35. Dancing through the night - Natasha, Steve and Sam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is for reynassidekick who wanted to know how the group celebrates Natasha's birthday (this is not including the cake scene in the cooking chapter).
> 
> (This has been sitting in my docs folder mostly finished for, like 4 months? I'm so sorry!)

Steve was a bit ashamed to admit that it had never even _occurred_ to him that Natasha had a birthday. She’s like Thor in that Steve isn’t entirely sure that she even ages normally. Not that he’s one to talk, but still.

 

So when Pepper had casually asked what he and Sam were doing for Natasha’s birthday, which apparently fell on a Thursday a week from then, Steve had frozen like a deer in the headlights.

 

Pepper’s eyes widened and she let out a quiet sound of surprise. “You didn’t remember or you didn’t know?”

 

“I didn’t know,” he replied as he ran a hand through his hair. “What…what are you doing for her?”

 

Pepper shrugged casually, though her eyes sparkled in that way that just gave him a full body _twitch_ whenever he saw it on Tony – mischievous glee. “Just some girl time,” she assured as if reading his mind. “Really, don’t worry about it too much. I don’t think she’ll mind since she never actually told you.”

 

Which was probably true. But Steve was already long past the point where he’d come to consider Natasha to be a friend/annoying sister and he really wanted to show her how much he appreciated her.

 

Generally.

 

For his own birthday, she had given him a five foot tall Bucky Bear remodeled to make one of the arms look like a metal prosthetic. It had also somehow been modified to say random things in Bucky’s voice at random times, which was nice.

 

He would later come to find out that those were not pre-recorded phrases but the actual Bucky talking to him in real time through the glorified two way nanny-cam, which was less nice but still kind of sweet.

 

The point was that Natasha cared about and looked out for him. He just wanted to return the favor outside of battle.

 

Unfortunately, despite being well into his twenties and awake for over three years now, he still had few practical ideas on how to celebrate a birthday for anyone.

 

But Sam did.

 

\----xxxx----

 

Sam blinked hard at the news that Natasha’s birthday was a mere six days away.

 

“Okay. Well, what ideas do you have so far?”

 

“I was thinking that we could go to one of those new amusement parks or maybe go dancing? Are there still places to go dancing?”

 

Sam let out a thoughtful hum. “If you’re taking dance classes, yeah, but not as much for the general public. The closest thing to that would probably be clubbing.”

 

“Is that fun?”

 

Sam blinked and his head jerked up from where it had been bent in thought to stare up at Steve. He blinked twice more slowly. “…YES. Yes, I think that she would enjoy that,” Sam said, squinting slightly at him.

 

Steve beamed brightly at him.

 

\----xxxx----

 

Natasha simply stared at them, wide green eyes shifting slowly back and forth between them. “You want to take me… clubbing,” she said slowly as if making sure the English translator in her head was functioning properly.

 

“There aren’t really many places to go dancing on short notice and we thought it’d be fun,” Steve said.

 

“Okay. So whose idea was this?” She asked.

 

Sam smirked lightly and raised his hand while Steve rolled his eyes. Natasha’s eyes widened a little at Sam. “You…are a good friend. You’re both just _really_ good friends,” she said, nodding along. Her voice was filled with sincerity even as her gaze turned to fall on Steve with something close to hunger.

 

Sam almost felt bad.

 

Any sympathy Sam may have felt disappeared when he came across Steve a couple days later, the Friday before Natasha’s birthday, relaxing casually on the couch of his living room in clothes that had clearly been chosen for him. He was wearing a pair of very low hanging black jeans that may very well be just paint instead of clothes and a just as tight blue T-shirt under a black leather vest.

 

If nothing else, they’d be getting a lot of free drinks that night.

 

Sam was happy to say that he didn’t even startle when he noticed Natasha standing at his elbow. She leaned in close and whispered low enough that he knew Steve couldn’t hear her even at that distance. “If you can get him drunk, you get _three_ no-questions-asked favors from me, Clint and/or Tony.”

 

“Seriously?”

 

“I’ll enjoy myself either way, but _can you imagine_?”

 

Sam glanced at Steve and had to use most of his energy to keep the smile that was quickly growing on his face from being full on _manic_. “You could have led with that. I don’t even need the favors.”

 

\----xxxx----

 

On the one hand, it turned out that getting Steve drunk was a no go (“You guys wanted to get me drunk? You should’ve asked _Thor_ ,”). On the other hand, if he didn’t have to uphold his Captain America status (and, really, who would actually expect to see Captain America in a nightclub?), Steve liked to party.

 

A lot.

 

Body shots? Check. (Steve on Natasha and then Sam, Natasha and about twelve different strangers on Steve because he was laughing too hard to stop them.)

 

Upside down drinking? Check. (Upside down, on the bar, _one handed,_ with a somersault off the bar at the end, just because he could. Natasha, of course, being the birthday girl, couldn’t let that stand unchallenged. She chose to do a triple backflip down the length of the bar and land on the shoulder of a wooden chair. Somehow they were not kicked out.)

 

Dancing? Check. Which was mostly tame right up until Natasha introduced Steve to the world of grinding. It turns out that being ground against by two (other) superheroes (at the _same time_ ) was exactly like what Sam had been expecting when they’d turned those scary smiles on him: equally alarmingly and flatteringly hilarious.

 

Flaming shots? Yup. If someone had told Sam that the juggling course he’d taken in preparation for his niece’s birthday party would one day would one day be used to juggle flaming shots, he would have laughed them out of his house. Had that same someone told him that he would be doing said juggling while standing on Captain America’s shoulders while said super soldier and a world famous spy caught the cups _in their mouths_ whenever he chose to let them fall, well.

 

He probably would have had them committed.

 

Fighting? Well, this was Steve Rogers, fighting is usually almost guaranteed.

 

That part actually started off simply enough. Steve’s asshole senses had apparently started tingling at some point after the flaming shots fiasco. So one moment Steve’s mouth was wide open around a shot glass that he’d caught and was downing and the next moment he was quickly and gently taking Sam down from his shoulders, handing over his shot glass and stalking over to a booth on the far wall.

 

Steve slid into the booth with a smoothness Sam was sure was only rented and not owned and gave a dark skinned girl in a loose blue dress a light peck on the cheek. “Sorry for the wait! I got a bit caught up,” he said.

 

The man sitting across from her scowled deeply. “Hey, man. Why don’t you get lost, huh? We’re having a moment here!”

 

Steve blinked at him slowly and smiled wider. He turned himself in the small booth to face the girl fully and leaned down to whisper in her ear, looking to all the world as if he were planning to give her a love bite, “Say the word and he’s gone. Guaranteed. Are you okay or do you need an out?”

 

The girl shivered and bit her lip. “I need an out. He’s been...he’s been following me all night!” she hissed back.

 

Steve leaned back and faced the man head on again. The guy, while certainly smaller than Steve was still significantly larger than most of the other men in the club. It was unlikely that he’d back down too easily. “I think it’s time that you left,” he tried anyway.

 

“Oh yeah? Says who?” he growled.

 

Steve opened his mouth to reply and then blinked, the soft click of a safety being turned off replacing his voice. Natasha leaned down into the guy’s line of sight so that she could speak without shouting. “The Avengers. You can leave now or you can get you ass kicked by Captain America and spend the next nine months after you get out of the hospital looking for a new job once you’ve realized that Bunkley’s fired you and no other security firm in the state will consider hiring you if it means being blacklisted by Stark Industries.”

 

It’d been a long time since Sam had seen someone hightail it out of a bar that fast.

 

Steve actually looked _disappointed_.

 

Steve stood up to allow the girl to rise and make her way back to a small group of clearly relieved girls and sat down again after waving at them.

 

Natasha slid into the newly vacated seat across from Steve and Sam slid in next to her. “Well, that was fun,” she said dryly, still vaguely amused.

 

“I thought so. I’m surprised that guy didn’t piss his pants.” Steve leaned back in his seat and let out a soft huff. “You’d think they’d take a hint.”

 

“We’re in a nightclub on Ladies Night. I’m pretty sure Ladies Night is only a thing to bribe women into coming back after dealing with shit like that,” Sam said with a shrug. “The bouncers are pretty good usually but they’re not omnipresent.”

 

Natasha frowned slightly, leaning forward to prop her elbows up on the table, turning slightly to face Sam. “Is it that common, though?” she asked. At Sam’s nod, her eyes narrowed a bit before she turned to Steve. They shared a look and then, as one, wide vicious smiles crept onto their faces.

 

Sam found himself cringing at that look even as his lips quirked up. “Okay, fine. But ground rules: no dead bodies and no more than 2 broken bones per person.”

 

Both nodded though the fact that he was fairly sure that they were both giggling like Christmas had come early made it seem slightly less sincere.

 

So off they went. They next three hours were spent hopping between various bars and clubs, over-aggressively flirting with idiots that were coming on way too strong or impersonating boyfriends, girlfriends, siblings and, because there was no point in even _trying_ sometimes, a dad.

 

(“ _What_? You’re not her dad!” “ _Excuse me?_ Are you saying I wouldn’t recognize my own daughter? Are you saying that I didn’t go to _every one_ of her recitals? _Who the hell do you think you are?_ I worked two jobs, walked through rain _and_ snow to put my little girl through college and you’re trying to tell me that she’s not my daughter? Steve, Natasha, get me my baby pictures!”)

 

By the time the night was over, they were all fully sober though you certainly couldn’t tell by the way they were laughing through their words giggling into their sodas.

 

And hey, only seven broken bones for the entire night. That’s a win, right?

 

 


	36. Random Nonsense - The Avengers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's not so much a story as a little blub of headcanons I wrote while bored.

  * Steve likes to use people’s first impressions/misconceptions against them. He allows Tony to painstakingly teach him how to use the newest StarkPad even though he already has his own that he knows how to use full well. He’ll go from typing essays with breathtaking speed or drawing with a stylus to poking carefully at his internet browser to see if he can get one of those ‘darn online newspapers’ to come up. For some reason, JARVIS has chosen not to clue Tony in on this.



 

  * Steve has multiple Tumblr accounts. One is his actual account, which he uses to talk with other artists, post photos he takes of things he likes, etc. The other accounts… well, three are just of Steve pretending to be other people pretending to be Captain America. One is a history buff blog. One is an Avengers fan blog that he shares with Natasha, Sam and Clint that posts random stuff about the team and makes up random rumors (”Are the Avengers in a polyamourous relationship? They _are_  all living in pretty close quarters…”). Tony is aware of this blog and posts on it frequently (under the impression that Natasha is responsible for most of the craziness.)



 

  * Tony’s bed is weirdly, sort of ridiculously, comfortable. It's basically concentrated fluff. At least once a month Clint and/or Natasha will sneak into his room roll around/nap on his bed for an hour or two and then straighten everything back up before leaving. For some reason (that has _absolutely nothing_ to do with the fact that it’s adorable), JARVIS hasn’t mentioned this to Tony yet.




	37. Saving the Team - Steve, Natasha and the Avengers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt by anon:  How about Nat finding Steve and the others runaway Avengers after Civil War, and/or helping Steve break them out from the RAFT prison?

****“I thought this would be harder.”

Natasha couldn’t help her grin as she glanced over at Steve, who was peering around the corner to make sure that there weren’t any guards around. At his nod, the two fully rounded the corner, not even bothering to stay against the wall.

“I almost want to call it a trap but I’ve actually met these guys. They probably came up with the ‘underwater prison’ thing, felt assured of their sneaky brilliance, and then didn’t think much further past that.”

Steve let out a deep sigh at that, running a hand through his hair. “If I’d known it’d be this easy though, I wouldn’t have bothered spending two weeks planning the breakout.” He paused then, a sharp shiver visibly running up his spine. “Shit. _Shit_. Sam is never going to let us forget that,” he groaned out.

Natasha paused at that, a couple steps behind. When he noticed she was no longer beside him, Steve stopped and turned around. Glancing around to make sure that he hadn’t actually tripped any traps, Steve frowned and raised an eyebrow.

“Who says he has to find out?”

“He’s _obviously_ going to find out. Aside from the entrance, this place is pretty much empty.”

“But _they_ don’t know that.”

Steve leaned back a little on his heels and just stared at her. Normally, he was pretty good at (at least) half figuring out Natasha’s plans, but he couldn’t quite see where she was going with this.

She smirked and rolled her eyes. Pulling out her batons. She turned one up to full charge and sharply ran it across the wall, leaving a thick black scorch mark in its wake.

Steve only barely managed to smother the gleeful grin that threatened to come out.

xxxx

“Jesus, look at this place,” Scott breathed, letting out a low whistle. The place was well and truly _wrecked._ Debris littered the hallways and large portions of the walls and floor had scorch marks and holes in them. “What happened to all the guards?”

“A chunk of them fled once they saw who they were up against. A bit more than that were tossed in closets,” Natasha replied. Her tone was brisk and no-nonsense as she led them back the way they’d come. She was doing a great job of acting like there still might be conscious guards around as kept them to the shadows and made her way around the corners carefully. While Natasha acted as the lead, Steve was at the end of their conga-line, watching their rear.

Eyes kept on the road ahead, Sam reached a hand back to knock Steve once on the chest with his knuckles.

“Thanks, man. It took you long enough though,” he whispered. Despite the words, the man was still teasing and clearly pleased.

“Well, this wasn’t exactly an easy castle to find, princess.”

Sam snorted so hard it was nearly a choke, Wanda grinned over her shaking shoulders and Scott only barely stomped down on his gaffaw before it became to loud. Eyes still forward, Sam pointed back at him sharply, forcing Steve to lean back a little or risk poking out a eye.

“ _Rogers_. We are in the middle of an _escape_. Stop that.”

“As you wish, milady.”

“ _Children_. If you’re done?” Natasha called out, voice toned low. The boys all grinned but obediently quieted down, Wanda biting down hard on her bottom lip to keep from smiling wider.

It wasn’t long before they had managed to get everyone onto the plane they’d borrowed from T’Challa, Clint as the pilot and Natasha strapped in next to him.

Once they were fully up in the air, Clint inclined his head in Natasha’s direction. He voice was only barely above a whisper when he said, “Seriously? That was not remotely subtle.”

“They bought it, didn’t they?”

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr  
> [Notoyax17](http://notoyax17.tumblr.com/)  
> The Headcanon Tumblr  
> [Avengers BroTP Headcanons](http://avengersbrotpheadcanons.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cat's eye view](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1950693) by [Notoyax17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notoyax17/pseuds/Notoyax17)
  * [Of Lovebugs and Promises](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2109693) by [Notoyax17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notoyax17/pseuds/Notoyax17)




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